Murdaugh’s lawyers accuse SC attorney general of withholding murder evidence, leaks to media

Lawyers for Alex Murdaugh, who stands accused of murdering his wife and son in June 2021, have alleged in new court filings that the South Carolina Attorney General’s office has withheld discovery evidence and leaked details to news media.

“The state immediately decided Alex was the prime suspect, before anyone collected, investigated, or reviewed any evidence,” the motion filed by attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin say. “For over a year the Attorney General has used a State Grand Jury investigation of alleged white-collar crimes involving Murdaugh as a device to find evidence justifying the state’s blind guess that Alex murdered his wife and son.”

The multi-page motion, filed Tuesday in Colleton County where Murdaugh’s wife Maggie and son Paul were killed, asks state Judge Clifton Newman to compel Attorney General Alan Wilson’s prosecutors to “immediately” give evidence in the case to Murdaugh’s defense team as the U.S. and South Carolina constitutions require.

That motion in one of the state’s most notorious double homicides ever was the focus of a Wednesday press conference held by Harpootlian, a state senator, who called the withholding of evidence “unprecedented” and the attorney general’s actions “trial by ambush.”

“This conduct is unprecedented, unprecedented,” Harpootlian told a pack of some 15 local, state and national journalists outside his Columbia law office as a steady rain fell. “They are hiding the ball.”

The law requires prosecutors to turn over evidence within 30 days of being requested, and already 32 days have passed since the defense made its request, Harpootlian told reporters.

A landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady vs. Maryland, requires prosecutors turn over to defense lawyers all evidence that might be favorable to a defendant. In this case, Harpootlian said evidence was owed to them by Monday.

Normally, lawyers argue matters pertaining to their cases in court, not in a public press conference, but Harpootlian said Wilson’s act of withholding evidence from defense lawyers was so contrary to the rule of law that he wanted the public to know his client’s rights to a fair trial are being trampled on.

“We have nothing, zero, nada,” Harpootlian said.

In a legal response to Harpootlian, Attorney General top prosecutor Creighton Waters described the defense’s assertions about withholding evidence as a ‘’blatant attempt to create drama” and “clearly aimed at generating content for the press conference ... rather than actually doing anything meaningful to move forward litigation of the case.”

Waters’ motion also accused Murdaugh’s defense team of slow-walking various communications between the Attorney General’s office, and asserted the state has “already given thousands of pages of discovery materials to the defense.”

Much of evidence, especially that which pertains to the double murders, is sensitive and the judge needs to set rules governing its use, Waters wrote. He added that in any case, prosecutors cannot turn over the results of any of the case’s various search warrants to the defense until a judge orders those results unsealed.

“We wish to be clear that the Attorney General has every intention that this case be tried in the light of day,” Waters wrote.

Murdaugh, 54, a disbarred attorney, was indicted five weeks ago on July 14 for the June 2021 murders of his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, at their Colleton County hunting lodge estate of Moselle. Murdaugh has asserted he is innocent and wants to get the trial over so law enforcement can concentrate on finding “the real killer.”

The indictments happened 13 months after the killings, and the apparent lack of progress in the murder investigation fueled interest and numerous newspaper and television stories not just around the state, but throughout the nation.

Indictments in the case accuse Murdaugh of killing Maggie with a rifle and Paul with a shotgun. The indictments gave no motive.

The lack of detailed information underscores the puzzling unknowns that have been part of the case since the killings. Murdaugh’s murder trial is expected to be one of the most widely-watched trials in the state and nation in recent years.

Murdaugh also is charged in more than a dozen indictments with an array of financial theft crimes that allege he stole some $8.4 million from friends, associates, fellow lawyers and clients and laundered the stolen money through various bank accounts. He also is alleged to have used some of the stolen cash to set up a drug pipeline to buy drugs through intermediaries.

‘We have zero. Nothing’

The Attorney General’s office also denied Wednesday it had leaked any information to news media.

“It is categorically false that the Attorney General’s Office leaked any information in the Murdaugh murder case,” Wilson’s office said in a statement. “We’ve been in communication with the State Law Enforcement Division and they deny that they told anyone that our office leaked anything.”

Harpootlian’s motion said specifically, without offering details, that Wilson’s office had leaked advance warning to unnamed national news media about the July murder indictments “two days before the grand jury even voted.”

Harpootlian also said Wednesday that Murdaugh could go on trial in January and every day before then is crucial.

Defense lawyers need the time to evaluate the quality and quantity of the evidence, find and hire expert witnesses, interview witnesses and examine physical items that are evidence, he said. All over South Carolina, prosecutors turn over evidence to defense lawyers every day, Harpootlian said.

“This is gotcha prosecution,” Harpootlian said, his voice rising. “I don’t have a shred of paper. I don’t have an email. I don’t have an exhibit. We don’t have any evidence.”

Harpootlian told reporters there’s data from the black box of Murdaugh’s truck that the defense hasn’t seen. Such boxes, much like black boxes on aircraft, can capture location, speed and other data.

Neither has the defense had access to any autopsy reports, or an analysis of the time of death, Harpootlian said.

“We’ve never seen any of the sorts of the basic things you want to know in a murder case,” he said, accusing Wilson’s office of deliberately dragging its feet to make things more difficult for the defense.

Asked to give a percentage of the evidence they’re missing, Harpootlian said, “100%. We have zero. Nothing.”

Asked whether whether the state will seek the death penalty for the killings, Harpootlian said he doubted it because the case against Murdaugh is circumstantial given, he said, there are no eyewitnesses or video.

And no prosecutor who “knows what they’re doing” seeks the death penalty on a circumstantial case, said Harpootlian, who as a former solicitor tried death penalty cases.

Meanwhile, in a letter to the State Court Administration attached to Harpootlian’s motion, Harpootlian noted that Judge Carmen Mullen, chief judge of the 14th Judicial Circuit, has been excused from all Murdaugh matters. Therefore, Harpootlian said they’re requesting that S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty schedule a special term of court for January in Colleton County.

If a special court term cannot be scheduled for January, Harpootlian wrote, Murdaugh’s trial may have to wait until fall 2023 because he is a state legislator and excused from court duties while the Legislature is in session.

Harpootlian has also asked for the chief justice to consider whether Judge Newman should be the trial judge, since Newman issued search warrants in the case, and, as the Murdaugh trial judge, Newman might be put in the position of ruling whether his own search warrants were legal.

Senior Editor Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.