Alex Murdaugh asks S.C. Supreme Court to review Judge Toal’s jury tampering decision

Attorneys for convicted murderer and financial fraudster Alex Murdaugh are asking the S.C. Supreme Court to review a judge’s decision last winter that nixed Murdaugh’s bid to get a new trial on his murder charges based on alleged jury tampering by Colleton County Becky Hill.

It is not known how quickly the Supreme Court will rule.

In a January hearing, circuit Judge Jean Toal heard allegations of jury tampering by Hill, but ruled there was insufficient evidence to grant Murdaugh a new trial.

Murdaugh, 56, once a prominent South Carolina lawyer and member of a powerful legal dynasty, had been convicted in March 2023 by a Colleton County jury of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at their rural estate in June 2021. The trial lasted six weeks. The jury heard from more than 70 witnesses and deliberated a little more than an hour before finding Murdaugh guilty.

He is now serving two consecutive life sentences at the S.C. Department of Corrections.

After the trial, Murdaugh’s attorneys — Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin and Phil Barber — interviewed jurors and filed motions alleging Hill had improperly influenced jurors to deliver a quick guilty verdict because Hill was trying to hype sales of a book she published a few months after the trial called “Behind the Doors of Justice.”

Hill used her position as clerk of court to gather insider information about the trial, the attorneys alleged. Clerks of court supervise the care and feeding of jurors during trials and are in close contact with them.

Hill’s book was withdrawn from publication last winter after it was discovered that she plagiarized key sections of the book from a draft of a story by a veteran BBC reporter.

The jury tampering matter is separate from an all of the murder sentence and conviction, which is expected to be filed in the S.C. Court of Appeals later this summer.

This story is breaking news and will be updated.