Alex Murdaugh sentenced to life in prison for murders of wife, son in June 2021

In a hushed courtroom, Judge Clifton Newman spoke with a sad gentleness Friday as he tried to reconcile the spectacle of the tall, gaunt man in a jail jumpsuit before him with the memory of a once-prominent attorney, now convicted of murder.

Alex Murdaugh, a now-convicted murderer, was sentenced Friday to two consecutive sentences of life in prison without parole, ending a 28-day trial that put South Carolina’s Lowcountry in the limelight.

“You’ve practiced law before me. We’ve seen each other at various occasions throughout the years,” Newman wistfully told Murdaugh, 54, who stood between his attorneys stoic in his jumpsuit, with white socks and neon orange sandals, his hands locked in handcuffs.

Up until Friday, Murdaugh — whom the law said should be presumed innocent — had been allowed to attend trial wearing tailored blazers, button down shirts and dress slacks.

“It was especially heartbreaking for me to see you going in the media from a grieving father who lost a wife and a son to being a person indicted and convicted of killing them,” Newman said of Murdaugh, who at point point had been an object of great sympathy as investigators tried without success to find Maggie and Paul’s killer.

The six-week trial in downtown Walterboro ended Friday, after a jury of 12 women and men not 24 hours before unanimously found Murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder for the shooting deaths of his wife and son on the family’s remote 1,770-acre estate, called Moselle.

It took the jury less than three hours to convict.

The verdict will be appealed by Murdaugh’s attorneys, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, who told reporters Friday that they’ll appeal to the highest court, the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. After his sentencing, Murdaugh was remanded to the custody of the S.C. Department of Corrections.

In court, Murdaugh continued to claim innocence, resolutely telling Newman he would never hurt his wife and son.

“I’m innocent,” said Murdaugh, who at one time in his life ran the state’s trial lawyer’s association. “I would never hurt my wife Maggie or my son Paul Paul,” using the nickname he frequently used for his son when he testified in his defense.

Newman dismissed his remarks as yet another in a long web of lies, omissions and deceptions that began long before Murdaugh told law enforcement on June 7, 2021, that he had not been at the kennels where Maggie and Paul were shot.

“When will it end?” Newman asked Murdaugh. “It’s ended already, for the jury because they’ve concluded that you continued to lie and lie throughout your testimony.”

From his bench, Newman asked Murdaugh to reflect on the last time Maggie and Paul last looked him in the eyes.

In his closing argument, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters recreated the scene for the jury: Murdaugh had killed Paul first with two shotgun blasts fired from ambush, after which he picked up a .300 Blackout assault-type rifle and fired five shots, killing Maggie.

Both Maggie and Paul had lived long enough to likely recognize that it was Murdaugh who killed them, Waters said.

“I don’t know a person who’s always been such a gregarious, friendly person and cause a life to be tangled in such a weave of a web,” Newman told Murdaugh. “It’s so unfortunate, because you had such a lovely family of such friendly people, including you. And to go from that to this.”

In the audience, looking on, were Murdaugh’s brother, John Marvin, his sister, Lynn, and his surviving son, Buster, who with his uncle testified on his defense.

In 20 minutes, Newman, slowly, sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison for the murder of his wife, Maggie.

And, Newman, who before this trial had lost his own son, sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison for the murder of Paul, “whom you probably loved so much,” Newman added.

“I know you have to see Paul and Maggie during the nighttime when you are attempting to go to sleep,” said Newman, 71, whose remarks were broadcast live on Court TV. “I’m sure they come and visit you. I’m sure.”

“All day and every night,” Murdaugh replied.

After, a Murdaugh family member told The State Media Co., “At this time, our request is for prayers and privacy.”

The case against Alex Murdaugh

For six weeks, in the 201-year-old Colleton County Courthouse, some 90 miles south of Columbia, lead prosecutor Waters successfully argued a case with one major hurdle: no direct evidence.

The state’s case against Murdaugh was almost entirely circumstantial.

Prosecutors had no evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA, that would have clearly linked the defendant to the crimes and allowed the state to conclusively prove Murdaugh’s guilt. Even the weapons used to kill Paul and Maggie were missing — hidden or destroyed by Murdaugh, prosecutors contended.

To overcome that hurdle, prosecutors introduced hundreds of pieces of evidence, ranging from police interrogation videos, gunshot residue tests, car and cellphone data and — most importantly — a cellphone video taken from Paul’s phone that showed Murdaugh at the dog kennels in the minutes just before his wife and son were murdered.

Murdaugh had repeatedly told investigators that he hadn’t seen Paul or Maggie for at least an hour before they were believed to have been killed. Murdaugh’s alibi was that he was napping at home, before he drove to his ailing mother’s house in a nearby unincorporated community, Almeda, where he visited 30 to 40 minutes.

However, the digital data, along with Paul’s video, showed Murdaugh to be a liar and shredded his claim that he was not at the kennels the night of the killings, prosecutors showed.

In the end, what may have been Murdaugh’s Achilles heel was himself, and his admitted lies on the witness stand.

In testimony that was in turn tearful, defiant and litigious, Murdaugh denied committing murder.

But in five hours of Waters’ cross-examination, he offered a stunning series of admissions.

He confessed, for the first time, to lying about his alibi the night of June 7, 2021, and to a decade’s worth of thefts from his clients and his law firm, which he said was driven by a need to cover a $50,000-a-week addiction to prescription painkillers.

Newman granted the prosecution’s wish list of motions at the trial.

He allowed them to introduce a landslide of witnesses who testified about Murdaugh’s financial crimes, leading Harpootlian to protest that it was more of a “Madoff trial than a murder trial.” Bernie Madoff was imprisoned for orchestrating a $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history.

While not required to prove motive, Waters repeatedly accused Murdaugh of being a “family annihilator,” driven to commit a biblical act of destruction when the facade of his successful life began to crack.

Ballistics experts also matched a family gun to the weapon that killed Maggie, and the state used family’s phones and data from Murdaugh’s car to map out a minute-by-minute timeline of events, casting doubt on the defense’s improbable claim that Murdaugh missed the killings by mere minutes.

The verdict was a victory for S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, who was often seated at the prosecution table throughout the trial and even questioned a witness late in the case.

“No one, no matter who you are in society, is above the law,” said Wilson, himself the heir to a South Carolina political legacy. His father is congressman Joe Wilson.

As Wilson spoke after the verdict Friday, it started to rain, in an echo of the rain that has fallen throughout this case: The night of June 7, when it dripped on Maggie and Paul’s bodies, the day of the funeral where a sunny day gave way to a torrential downpour, and on the day of opening statements, when Waters compared sheets of rain lashing Walterboro to the gathering storm in Murdaugh’s life that drove him to murder.

Murdaugh still faces more than 90 charges for financial crimes and ongoing lawsuits from his theft of client money.

“He won’t have anything left but himself,” said attorney and state Rep. Justin Bamberg, who represents several of Murdaugh’s victims.

In court also were the family of Mallory Beach, the 19-year-old woman who was killed in a 2019 boat crash many believe to have been caused by Paul.

“We are grateful to see justice served,” Phillip Beach, Mallory’s father, told reporters.

Newman, in his sentencing, agreed that the pressure of a civil lawsuit brought on by the boat crash — led by lawyer Mark Tinsley, whom Newman called “a tiger” — threatened the shaky foundations of Murdaughs’s financial life.

Tinsley called Newman’s closing “compelling.”

“There were a lot of people in that courtroom like myself who would have liked to have said those words to Alex,” he said.

Evidence of guilt was clear to jurors

The veil of the jury room was lifted Friday morning, just hours after Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife and son, when a juror gave an interview revealing that it took them just 45 minutes to reach a verdict.

Among them was a student, a postal worker, a truck accessory store worker, a pharmacy technician and a warehouse manager.

In an interview to ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” juror Craig Moyer said they took a quick poll once they entered the deliberation room Thursday. Then, two jurors voted to acquit, another was unsure. Moyer voted to find Murdaugh guilty.

“We started deliberating, going through the evidence, and everybody was pretty much talking,” Moyer said. “And about 45 minutes later, after all our deliberating, we figured it out.”

The evidence, Moyer told the reporter, “was clear” — the short cellphone video shot by Paul by the dog kennels that witnesses testified includes three voices, Paul’s, Maggie’s and Murdaugh’s

On the stand, Murdaugh admitted to lying to investigators and to stealing millions of dollars at his law practice, all in hopes of convincing the jury he was telling the truth about not killing his family. But Moyer said if anything Murdaugh’s performance on the stand cemented his guilt.

“His responses, how quick he was with the defense, and his lies. Steady lies,” Moyer said. “(He was) a good liar, but not good enough.”

Murdaugh’s answers lacked empathy and real emotion, Moyer said.

“He never cried,” Moyer said of Murdaugh’s testimony. “All he did was blow snot. ... I saw his eyes. I was this close to him,” he said, indicating his distance to the interviewer.

On Friday, as Murdaugh was sentenced, many of the jurors sat in the audience.

Sooner after, they left the courthouse, accompanied for the last time by bailiffs and sheriff’s deputies.

They took selfies and group pictures, shook hands and hugged, before getting into their personal cars and driving away.

A tangled web

Newman said Friday that he didn’t question the state’s decision not to seek the death penalty against Murdaugh.

But he noted that so many defendants sentenced in the Colleton courthouse received death for less heinous offenses.

“Look around the many portraits of judges and other court officials and reflect on the fact that over the past century, your family, including you, have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom and many have received the death penalty. Probably for lesser conduct,” Newman said.

Newman asked Murdaugh what he meant when he said on the witness stand, “What a tangled web we weave” in reference to his previous lies.

“When I lied, I continued to lie,” he said.

After the sentencing, SLED Chief Mark Keel made a rare appearance, praising his agents for their work on the case.

“They are dedicated public servants, and for that I’m grateful,” Keel said. “They worked tirelessly to ensure justice was done for Maggie and Paul.”

Keel thanked his staff who had labored under intense scrutiny and pressure for 21 months, often missing birthdays and other family milestones, to help deliver the verdict.

“Alex Murdaugh was found guilty because he was guilty,” Keel said.

As Murdaugh continues to face a slew of other charges for theft and financial crimes, Keel issued a warning to “anyone who aided or assisted Alex Murdaugh in committing any crime, that justice will be served.”

Before Murdaugh was taken out of the Colleton County Courthouse Friday for the final time, Newman gave him one last opportunity to speak.

“I respect this court, but I am innocent,” Murdaugh said in one last act of defiance.

“It might not have been you.” Newman said, nodding gently in agreement. “It might have been the monster you become when you take 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 opioid pills. Maybe you become another person. I’ve seen that before. The person standing before me was not the person who committed the crime, though it’s the same individual.”