Murdaugh attorneys allege jury tampering by clerk of court, request federal investigation

Defense attorneys for convicted killer Alex Mudaugh on Tuesday alleged that Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill unlawfully tampered with the jury that found Murdaugh guilty of killing his wife and son and requested that Murdaugh be given a new trial.

The allegation that Hill tampered with the jury was made both in a 65-page filing in the S.C. Court of Appeals by defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Phil Barber and Margaret Fox, as well as in a letter Harpootlian wrote to U.S. Attorney Adair Boroughs requesting an FBI investigation.

Both the filing and the letter say the alleged jury tampering denied Murdaugh his right to a fair jury trial. The filing contains sworn affidavits by two people who served on the jury, as well as sworn affidavits by Murdaugh defense team staffer Holli Miller that summarized interviews the defense team had with two other jurors. In the filing, the jurors’ names were blacked out.

Tuesday’s surprise filing was the latest swerve in a sprawling crime and law enforcement saga, which for more than two years has been marked by one unexpected twist after another. The case involves a fatal mix of violent crime, betrayal and monstrous financial crimes, as well as the disgrace and collapse of the powerful Murdaugh family legal dynasty, which held sway in South Carolina’s Lowcountry for more than 100 years.

The latest filing’s main allegation: that Hill unlawfully tampered with jurors to promote a book she was writing about the case and in so doing, she broke the law and prevented Murdaugh from having a fair trial. .

Hill tampered with the jury “to secure for herself a book deal and media appearances that would not happen in the event of a mistrial. Ms. Hill betrayed her oath of office for money and fame,” the filing said.

It will be up to the State Attorney General’s office to file a reply with the Court of Appeals.

“We are currently reviewing the defense’s latest motion and will respond through the legal process at the appropriate time,” the Attorney General’s office said Tuesday afternoon. Key prosecutors on the prosecution team were Creighton Waters, John Meadors and Don Zelenka.

Hill could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Hill indicated she was talking with a lawyer and may have a statement later.

In their court filing, the defense lawyers said, “Defendant Richard Alexander Murdaugh... moves the Court for a new trial after discovering that the Clerk of Court tampered with the jury by advising them not to believe Murdaugh’s testimony and other evidence presented by the defense, pressuring them to reach a quick guilty verdict, and even misrepresenting critical and material information to the trial judge in her campaign to remove a juror she believed favorable to the defense.”

As clerk of court during the Murdaugh trial, Hill had numerous interactions with jurors and was responsible for overseeing their breaks and comings and goings from the courtroom.

She was among the first to publish a book about the case and Mudaugh’s trial. At least 10 books are in the works or have been published. Hill’s book, called “Behind the Doors of Justice: the Mudaugh Murders,” was published in late July. Citing her long acquaintance with the Murdaugh family and other Lowcountry people and her clerk of court position, she billed her book as an insider’s account of the widely-publicized event.

Hill’s book opened with a declaration that “I knew in my heart he (Murdaugh) was guilty.”

While Hill does not say when she became convinced, she described the jury’s visit to Moselle, the Murdaugh family estate where the killings took place, shortly before the end of the trial as a turning point. She wrote that when “the jurors viewed the Moselle property, we all could hear and see that Alex’s story was impossible... Some of us either from the courthouse, law enforcement or jury at Moselle had an epiphany and shared our thoughts with our eyes.”

In their filing, defense lawyers allege, “She told jurors not to be ‘fooled by’ Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony in his own defense. Ms. Hill had frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson, a Court-appointed substitution for the foreperson the jury elected for itself at the request of Ms. Hill. During the trial, Ms. Hill asked jurors for their opinions about Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt or innocence. Ms. Hill invented a story about a Facebook post to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty. Ms. Hill pressured the jurors to reach a quick verdict, telling them from the outset of their deliberations that it ‘shouldn’t take them long.’”

Hill also had a close relationship with various unnamed members of the media, the filing alleges. “Ms. Hill told jurors that after the trial they would be famous and predicted that the media would request interviews with them. Ms. Hill even handed out reporters’ business cards to jurors during the trial.

“Juror No. 578 took this to heart and made an appearance on Good Morning America the night of the verdict, which is why on the day the jury began deliberations he wore a suit coat for the first time during the trial. After the verdict and immediately before sentencing, Ms. Hill pressured the jury to speak as a group to reporters from a network news show,” the filing alleged.

The filing also alleged that Hill traveled with jurors to New York City when they appeared on the Today show.

The filing also alleges that Hill had multiple private conversations with the newly-elected jury foreperson in the jurors’ single-occupancy bathroom.

“Ms. Hill even instructed jurors they could not ask Foreperson Juror No. 826 about the conversations,” the filing alleged.

The filing also alleged that Hill told the six jurors on the 12-person jury who smoked that they couldn’t have any smoke breaks until they came out with a verdict.

In a media interview about her book earlier this summer, Hill told a reporter that every day during the trial, she made notes about events, such as when she delivered the witness oath to Alex Murdaugh, and had access to exhibits introduced at trial.

Murdaugh’s six-week double-murder trial, which began in January and finished in early March, was perhaps the most notorious criminal trial in South Carolina history. Court TV livestreamed the trial to a national audience. The trial featured more than 70 witnesses, one of whom was Murdaugh, who took the stand in a fruitless attempt to convince the jury he didn’t fatally shoot his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at the family’s secluded 1,770-acre estate in rural Colleton County.

The jury took less than three hours to reach its verdict. Murdaugh has repeatedly said he is innocent of the killings.

During his testimony, Murdaugh, a disbarred Hampton attorney and fourth-generation member of a prominent Lowountry legal and political family, confessed to numerous financial crimes involving stealing millions of dollars from his law partners, friends, family and clients who had won millions in legal settlements.

At the trial, Murdaugh repeatedly told the jury he did not kill Maggie and Paul.

But the jury gave more weight to evidence other than Murdaugh’s testimony. That evidence included a cellphone video taken by Paul minutes before he was killed that had Murdaugh’s voice on it. Murdaugh had denied being anywhere near the death scene in the hours before the killings.

Murdaugh, 55, is now serving two consecutive life sentences for murder in the S.C. Department of Corrections. He has no chance of parole. Murdaugh contended other people killed his wife and son but never came up with any evidence to support his charges. The death weapons — Maggie was killed with an assault-type rifle and Paul with a shotgun — have never been found.

Murdaugh is scheduled to plead guilty to his financial crimes on Sept. 21 in federal court in Charleston.

On the trial’s last day, state Judge Clifton Newman removed a juror and replaced her with an alternate juror.

Newman said the juror he removed had engaged in improper discussions and had, despite court warnings to the jury not to discuss the case, offered her opinion on evidence to other people.

“This juror has had contact or discussion concerning the case with at least three individuals,” Newman told the courtroom.

Newman had started the trial with six alternate jurors and had to replace four others due to health reasons.

In a statement to the media accompanying Tuesday’s letter to the U.S. Attorney and a copy of the filing, Harpootlian and Griffin said, “The serious allegations in the petition filed today speak for themselves but we believe they explain a number of peculiarities in the six-week trial.”

The defense attorneys also asked that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, whose agents investigated the case, “stand down on initiating any investigation of these allegations since they are heavily invested in maintaining Alex’s conviction. We suggest that they wait for the Court of Appeals to rule and receive direction from the trial court, if the Court of Appeals remands the case for an evidentiary hearing. We also would request that those in the media and the public respect the privacy of those included in this filing.”

In his letter to U.S. Attorney Boroughs, Harpootlian said that Murdaugh “may be the most unpopular man in South Carolina right now. He has become the symbol of the Lowcountry judicial corruption.”

Nonetheless, Harpootlian wrote, federal investigation of the jury tampering allegations can be a “shield that prevents popular passions against a hated person from injuring the rights enjoyed by all persons.”

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon on State House grounds, Harpootlian said the defense team had tried to get jurors to talk but it wasn’t until Hill’s book appeared (in late July or early August) that some jurors opened up.

Harpootlian, implying that SLED has a conflict if it were to begin now taking statements from jurors, also said one of the reasons he wanted the FBI to investigate was because a SLED agent had admitted in testimony during the trial lying to the grand jury that issued the murder indictments against Murdaugh.

“All these jurors are going to wind up testifying (in an evidentiary hearing) anyway,” Harpootlian told a throng of reporters assembled under a hot September sun near the rear of the State House.

Any hearing in this matter should be public, Harpootlian said.

Harpootlian also said Hill’s book is “not well written” and “not accurate, in our opinion.”

Joe McCulloch, who represents two of the jurors cited in the defense filings, said Tuesday, “The filing by the defense today suggests only that the court must take a hard look at the jury deliberations in the Murdaugh murder trial. The defense requests that the court reach a conclusion as to whether there was an influence on the jury deliberations that requires, for the sake of justice, a new trial. The prosecution should desire this as much as the defense.”

McCulloch added, “If a new trial is required – that trial must be fair, neutral, and devoid of any influence.”

Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter, two lawyers whose investigations in 2021 led to the first disclosures that Murdaugh had committed a massive public fraud, issued a statement Tuesday. “It is an extraordinary thing to accuse a Clerk of Court with jury tampering. The right to a fair and impartial jury is the bedrock of our judicial system. Time will tell whether there is any merit in this latest Murdaugh missive, or whether this is just another Murdaugh misdirection.”

Late Tuesday, Harpootlian had advice for jurors who have not made statements.

“If we were jurors in this case, we would want to have an attorney before we talked to anyone,” said Harpootlian, speaking on behalf of the defense team. “Jurors should get advice from an attorney before they speak to anyone else – including us or the FBI or SLED. They could be deceived into making a statement they come to regret later.”