Alex Murdaugh Asks State Supreme Court To Review Jury Tampering Decision

 Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has asked the South Carolina State Supreme Court to review a decision earlier this year that denied him a new trial based on jury tampering allegations.

Murdaugh’s attorneys filed a motion this week requesting the state’s highest court review the lower court judge’s decision to deny Murdaugh a new trial, WYFF reported. He is also appealing his conviction to the state court of appeals.

Murdaugh was found guilty in March 2023 for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul.

Murdaugh’s allegations of jury tampering centered around former county clerk Rebecca “Becky” Hill, who worked on Murdaugh’s murder trial and wrote a book about the case. Murdaugh claimed that Hill influenced the jury to find him guilty so that she could sell a book about the trial.

Murdaugh had attempted to use the allegations to get a new trial, but in January, Judge Jean Toal denied his bid even as she condemned Hill’s actions.

Toal said Hill was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” and that she “wanted to write a book about the trial and expressed that as early as November 2022, long before the trial began.”

Hill has denied the allegations against her, but Toal determined that Hill had told another clerk and others of “her desire for a guilty verdict because it would sell books.”

“She made comments about Murdaugh’s demeanor as he testified and she made some of those comments before he testified to at least one and maybe more jurors,” Toal said, according to CNN. “Did clerk of court Hill’s comments have any impact on the verdict of the jury? I find that the answer to this question is no.”

Toal added that the jurors determined Murdaugh to be guilty “without fear or favor” but that Hill “allowed public attention of the moment to overcome her duty.”

“I simply do not believe that the authority of our South Carolina Supreme Court requires a new trial in a very lengthy trial such as this on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-influenced clerk of courts,” Toal said, according to CNN.

But one juror answered “Yes, ma’am,” when the judge asked if Hill’s comments affected her vote. The juror later told the judge that she stood by an earlier sworn affidavit that said the other jurors influenced her to vote guilty more than Hill’s comments.

In his closing arguments, Murdaugh attorney Jim Griffin cited case law while arguing that any communication from court staff to jurors is considered prejudicial, and that the defense proved Hill had prejudicial communications with jurors. He argued that “one of those jurors says it influenced my verdict. How is that not prejudice?”

Hill resigned from her position in March and is now facing 76 counts of ethics violations, many pertaining to that trial.