March 2, 2023, 10:50 PM
March 2, 2023, 10:50 PM
American Alex Murdaugh was found guilty this Thursday of murdering his wife and youngest son.
The trial of this wealthy and influential 54-year-old lawyer in the state of South Carolina was followed with expectation by the public and the media in the United States.
After nearly six weeks of trial, the city of Walterboro jury returned its verdict after about three hours of deliberation.
They concluded that Murdaugh murdered his wife, Maggie, 52, and her youngest son Paul, 22,
Murdaugh was also found guilty of two counts of illegal possession of weapons.
Both were shot to death on June 7, 2021 in a kennel located on the family’s 690-hectare hunting estate called Moselle.
The lawyer faces a sentence of between 30 years and life imprisonment. The sentence will be announced this Friday.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson emphasized in a subsequent press conference that this case demonstrates that “No one is above the law, no matter where they are in society”.
Jurors heard the statements of more than 75 witnesses and accessed some 800 pieces of evidence.
Murdaugh admitted during trial to stealing millions of dollars from clients and lying to investigators about his presence at the crime scene, but claimed he was innocent of the murder charges.
“I didn’t kill Maggie, and I didn’t kill Paul. I would never hurt Maggie and I would never hurt Paul, ever, under any circumstances,” he alleged.
According to prosecutors, the former lawyer killed his wife and son to win over the sympathies of the community and divert attention from the process against him, lengthening it to find better ways to defend himself.
The prosecution was unable to find the weapons used in the murder or other physical evidence, but there was one element that could have been decisive in convincing the 12 jurors.
Among the evidence presented, he highlighted a Snapchat video on Paul’s mobile phone filmed minutes before the murders, and in which the voices of the three were heard.
For 20 months after the murders, Murdaugh repeatedly told security forces that he had not been at the kennels, where the killings took place, all night, but instead had been dozing at home.
But in the video recorded by Paul, Murdaugh’s voice is heard in the background.
Testifying at trial, Murdaugh admitted that he had lied, claiming that his years of addiction to painkillers induced a paranoid state in him.
Prosecutors used this example to argue that Murdaugh is a skilled and experienced liar.
“Don’t let him fool you too,” the prosecutor stressed.
A prominent family fallen from grace
The Murdaughs are a prominent South Carolina family of lawyers.
Alex Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were elected area prosecutors for more than eight decades, running a successful law firm with dozens of attorneys.
For 86 years, someone in the Murdaugh family served as the attorney general for the 14th Judicial Circuit in Hampton County.
The defendant was a prominent and respected lawyer in the city, but that began to unravel in the 2010s after a series of incidents involving his family.
The most prominent was a boat accident in February 2019 in which the young Mallory Beach died and for which Murdaugh’s youngest son, Paul, was charged with negligent homicide for sailing the boat while intoxicated.
Months after the murder of Maggie and Paul, their law firm announced that Murdaugh had resigned from the firm, allegedly for embezzlement.
Hours later, Murdaugh called 911 and said he had been shot in the head while changing a tire on his car on the side of a road.
But later he admitted that he had organized the attack against him so that his eldest son, Buster, could collect his life insurance. He also admitted to battling opioid addiction and starting a rehab program.
In the months that followed, his law license was suspended and he was charged with insurance fraud. He also faced separate charges of financial fraud, stemming from allegations that he stole millions in client legal settlements.
The now convicted man admitted to everything related to the theft of money during the trial, claiming that he needed it to finance his drug addiction.
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