Murdaugh’s lawyers ask SC Supreme Court to kick Judge Newman off the case

Attorneys for convicted murderer and disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh on Wednesday asked the S.C. Supreme Court to remove Judge Clifton Newman from handling all future appeals, hearings and trials in the Murdaugh case.

The attorneys’ unusual motion — called a writ of prohibition — alleged that since Newman was a participant in various matters that will be in dispute at an upcoming hearing involving alleged jury tampering at Murdaugh’s trial, he should not be allow to preside over that or other hearings in which Murdaugh is seeking a new trial.

Murdaugh is seeking a new trial based on the jury tampering allegations and has a right to an impartial judge, said Wednesday’s motion, which ran to nearly 300 pages with accompanying exhibits. For some two years, Newman has had one of the most visible roles — along with prosecutors, defense attorneys and Murdaugh himself — in the ever-expanding saga of crimes involving Murdaugh.

Also, the motion contended, Newman has made numerous statements in and out of court expressing his personal opinion about Murdaugh’s guilt, legal issues and trial strategy. Those statements, including one aired on national television, violate the Code of Judicial Conduct, which requires impartiality, the motion said.

“Mr. Murdaugh’s right to have his appeal heard by an impartial judge will be violated if Judge Newman proceeds to hear his motion for a new trial,” Wednesday’s motion asserted.

In a parallel motion, Murdaugh’s lawyers are also asking the high court to stay, or halt, all current Murdaugh-related court proceedings pending a Supreme Court decision on the lawyers’ broad request to prohibit Newman from sitting on Murdaugh cases.

The State contacted Judge Newman Wednesday afternoon for comment but he had no immediate response.

The motion also includes an affidavit by Gregory Adams, a University of South Carolina School of Law professor emeritus and ethics expert, saying that Newman should recuse himself from the case because his comments about it and other actions while it is still pending violate the Code of Judicial Conduct.

The filing asserted it is not suggesting that Judge Newman “did anything improper during the trial,” but that he was an eyewitness to and participant in some of the events that will likely be discussed at any hearing involving jury tampering.

It is the latest and most aggressive of a series of filings — including several that have alleged unlawful jury tampering by Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill — made by Murdaugh’s defense team in the wake of one of South Carolina’s most sensational criminal trials in the modern era. Defense lawyers include Columbia attorneys Jim Griffin and state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland.

The filing throws a spotlight on a request last week by Murdaugh attorneys for a hearing in Colleton County on the jury tampering allegations. The S.C. Court of Appeals approved such a hearing last week, but Murdaugh’s attorneys had to make a formal request in the county where the trial was held. No judge has been announced for that hearing, but the motion said Newman has been assigned to the hearing.

The Attorney General’s office, which may oppose removing Newman from the case, had no immediate comment on Murdaugh’s latest motion.

In their motion for a stay, the Murdaugh lawyers specifically ask the Supreme Court to stay, or stop, Newman from presiding over a financial crimes case scheduled to start Nov. 27 in Beaufort County state court pending a permanent resolution of the request to remove him from all Murdaugh-related cases.

That Nov. 27 case concerns Murdaugh’s diversion of more than $4 million in insurance proceeds to himself and another lawyer that were due the heirs of Gloria Satterfield, a longtime Murdaugh family housekeeper. She died of injuries received in a 2018 fall at the family house. Murdaugh has already pleaded guilty in federal court to the theft but has not been sentenced.

Wednesday’s motion also contains various exhibits, including an Oct. 18 letter from Harpootlian to Judge Newman, asking Newman to recuse himself from the upcoming jury tampering hearing because Newman was purportedly a witness to some of the alleged events.

The motion does not contain any response from Newman, but the exhibits include a letter from lead trial prosecutor Creighton Waters asserting that the issues Harpootlian raised in his letter to the judge aren’t sufficient to remove him from the case. Waters also wrote that it would be a “considerable expense of time and effort” to bring another judge up to date on Murdaugh’s very complex and controversial case.

Last March, a Colleton County jury convicted Murdaugh, 55, a disbarred attorney, of murdering his wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, in 2021 at the family’s rural estate in the western part of the county. The jury, which heard more than 60 witnesses and saw hundreds of exhibits introduced during the six-week trial, deliberated less than three hours. A day after the verdict, on March 3, Judge Newman sentenced Murdaugh to two consecutive life sentences.

Newman, 71, a soft-spoken, unflappable but occasionally blunt judge, gained national recognition and broad popularity last winter for his patience and handling of the Murdaugh trial. He had been appointed to the Murdaugh case by the S.C. Supreme Court, the same high court that the Murdaugh attorneys are asking to remove him from presiding at further proceedings in the case.

After the Murdaugh trial, Newman came in for wide praise.

Within weeks of the verdict, Newman spoke at his law school alma mater, Cleveland State University College of Law, where he was described as “the best known judge in the world right now.” After the verdict, former South Carolina U.S. Attorney Pete Strom, a Columbia lawyer, tweeted in a widely shared post, “Please join me in raising a glass in honor of Judge Clifton Newman. Does anyone disagree that he sets the gold standard for how a judge conducts a trial?”

In August, Newman spoke about the trial at an American Bar Association panel in the group’s annual meeting in Denver.

Newman, who will turn 72 later in November, is expected to retire at year’s end. South Carolina judges and justices must retire by the end of the year they turn 72. However, some judges are allowed by the high court to stay on in limited capacities after their retirement date.

Murdaugh, the fourth-generation member of a wealthy Lowcountry political and legal family, has also pled guilty in federal court to more than a decade’s worth of embezzlements from his law firm, his clients, his friends and others.

Mystery surrounded killings after his wife and son were shot to death on June 7, 2021, on the family’s deserted estate, and Murdaugh — in testimony when he took the witness stand at his trial — said that he found the bodies and called law enforcement.

There were no eyewitnesses. The killer used two different weapons, which have never been found. Murdaugh has continued to insist he is innocent.

Prosecutors with the state Attorney General’s office displayed numerous kinds of evidence to the jury, including a crucial video that showed Murdaugh at the site of the killings minutes before they were alleged to have taken place, cellphone geolocation data and ballistics.

The prosecution’s version of events was that hidden behind a facade of power and respectability, Murdaugh lived a secret life of lies and betrayal, nursing a decades-long painkiller addiction and embezzling millions of dollars. Prosecutors contended that pressure created by the imminent exposure of his secret world in June 2021 that drove him to slaughter his wife and son and plan an elaborate coverup.

Numerous true crime “documentaries” and news shows have been aired on various cable channels and television networks about the Murdaugh case. National newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about the case.

Already, several books — including one in French by a Paris-based journalist who attended the trial — have been published and another half-dozen are in the works.

Murdaugh’s lawyers, who include Margaret Fox and Phil Barber, cited various specific examples in Newman’s alleged compromised or questionable behavior:

▪ Assorted statements Newman made while sentencing Murdaugh last March 3, including that Murdaugh as a lawyer had “access to the wheels of justice to deflect the (murder) investigation” and the fact that Mrudaugh’s family had tried death sentence cases in the courtroom where Murdaugh now stood, guilty of a double murder. These statements were irrelevant and proof of personal bias, Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote.

▪ Statements that Newman made to national media and in national forums where the judge denounced Murdaugh, including on the Today show with Craig Melvin and at the Cleveland State College of Law where the judge said Murdaugh “committed an unforgivable, unimaginable crime.” In other cases when judges have spoken to the media in similar fashion, it has “almost universally been found to be misconduct,” Griffin and Harpootlian argued.

▪ Newman’s position of likely being called as a witness at Colleton County Clerk of Court Hill’s alleged jury tampering upcoming hearing. While lawyers are not typically able to call judges as witnesses during the appeals process, in this case Newman was a witness to a crucial episode involving Hill, an episode that should get Murdaugh a new trial, Murdaugh’s attorneys said. Newman’s personal knowledge of facts “disqualifies him from impartially weighing” the evidence, according to the motion.

Murdaugh’s attorneys also said that out of “fairness,” they acknowledge that at the end of Murdaugh’s trial in March, the judge probably thought his role in the case had reached an end. He was set to retire at the end of this year, and an appeal would not likely be filed before then, so he felt comfortable in making public statements, they wrote.

“Sometimes the unexpected happens,” Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote, referring to what they called the surprise discovery in August of evidence indicating that clerk of court Hill had allegedly tampered with the jury and their request for a new trial based on that evidence.

“Judge Newman’s public statements in this matter should have adhered to the Canons (of Ethics) even after it seemed his role in this matter had ended,” Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote.

(This is a breaking news story. Check back for more details.)