SC killer Alex Murdaugh may plead guilty to federal financial crimes, his lawyer says

A lawyer for convicted double-murderer Alex Murdaugh signaled Wednesday that his client will likely plead guilty to a sweeping series of federal financial crimes.

Murdaugh, 55, a disbarred lawyer who was once a member of one of South Carolina’s dominant law firms, entered a formal plea of not guilty Wednesday in a brief federal arraignment hearing in Charleston.

But his lawyer, Jim Griffin, told Magistrate Judge Molly Cherry that Murdaugh likely intends to change his plea of not guilty “in the near future,” but he didn’t specify a date.

Left undetermined was how many counts of a 22-count federal indictment Murdaugh would plead guilty to.

Asked for comment after the hearing, Murdaugh’s other attorney, state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, told reporters outside of the courthouse, “We’ll do our talking in the courtroom.”

Murdaugh’s indictment last week includes his highly-publicized alleged theft of $4.3 million from his dead housekeeper’s estate, his alleged unlawful collusion with former Hampton banker Russell Laffitte and his alleged serial embezzlements of millions of dollars belonging to former clients.

In all, the 28-page federal indictment alleges Murdaugh stole some $7 million from 2011 to 2021 from former clients and others.

Wednesday was Murdaugh’s first appearance in a South Carolina public courtroom since March 3, when state Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul, after a roughly six-week trial.

Unlike that court event, viewed by thousands of people on national television, Wednesday’s appearance was confined to a small courtroom audience of lawyers, law enforcement officers and reporters. Cameras are not allowed in federal court.

Murdaugh was seen dressed in a freshly-pressed orange prison jumpsuit, his ginger-gray-colored hair was close-cropped and he energetically chatted and smiled with his lawyers. He wore white tennis shoes with the laces removed and was handcuffed.

Earlier Wednesday, he was transported from an undisclosed state prison where he is being held in protective custody, away from other inmates, to the downtown Charleston federal courtroom at 85 Broad St. After the hearing, he was returned to state custody.

Murdaugh admitted at murder trial to financial crimes

Murdaugh has already been indicted by a state grand jury for most, if not all, of the alleged illegal circumstances, that the federal grand jury indicted him on.

However, while the state grand jury alleged violations of state law, the federal grand jury named violations of federal law, including national laws regulating banks, their deposits and transfers of money by wires.

At his murder trial in Colleton County, Murdaugh took the witness stand and, in an effort to get the jury to believe him when he said he didn’t kill his wife and son, he admitted in sworn testimony to many of the numerous financial crimes he is charged with.

A schedule for trying the parallel state and federal prosecutions have been announced.

But if Murdaugh pleads guilty to all federal financial crimes, there will be no federal trial.

The federal indictment charges Murdaugh with 14 counts of money laundering, five counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, one count of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Although the state grand jury issued its first financial crimes indictments in fall 2021, state law enforcement officials have not tried him yet. They have said that they concentrated their efforts on bringing Murdaugh to trial on murder charges.

Federal prosecutors Emily Limehouse, Winston Holliday and Katie Stoughton were in the courtroom Wednesday.

They left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

Murdaugh, a former president of the S.C. Trial Lawyers Association, comes from a family of prominent lawyers.

His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all solicitors of the 14th Judicial Circuit, a five-county region in the southeastern corner of the state.

Murdaugh’s firm — formerly known as Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick, or PMPED — was started by his great-grandfather in 1910, and was known around South Carolina for its multimillion-dollar settlements and verdicts in personal injury cases.

In an effort to disassociate itself from Murdaugh, the firm has since rebranded itself as The Parker Law Group.