Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for the murders of his wife and son – another chapter in the downfall of the disgraced attorney whose dynastic family had significant legal reach for decades in parts of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
Judge Clifton Newman, before handing down two consecutive life sentences, reminded Murdaugh of his astonishing fall from grace, saying he had to have a portrait of Murdaugh’s grandfather removed from the courtroom to ensure a fair trial. But his defense, which included Murdaugh’s testimony, was “not credible, not believable,” the judge admonished the former lawyer.
“You can convince yourself about it but obviously you have the inability to convince anyone else,” Newman said.
Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, were found fatally shot on the family’s Islandton property on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh, who took the stand last week in his own defense, maintained he didn’t kill them and found the bodies after returning from a brief visit to his sick mother that night.
Newman on Friday pointedly asked when Murdaugh’s web of deceit would end.
“I know you have to see Paul and Maggie during the night times when you’re attempting to go to sleep. I’m sure they come and visit you,” the judge told Alex Murdaugh at one point in the Colleton County courtroom.
“Every night,” Murdaugh said.
His defense attorneys said they plan to appeal the sentence within 10 days.
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian defended the decision to let Murdaugh testify, saying his credibility was under question because of his alleged financial wrongdoings.
“Once they got that character information – ‘he’s a thief, he’s a liar’ – then this jury had to think that he’s a despicable human being, and not to be believed,” Harpootlian told reporters after sentencing. Murdaugh, he added, always wanted to take the stand.
Harpootlian told CNN Friday that his client was “not happy” with the verdict but “expected it.” The attorney said it was “inexplicable that he would execute his son and his wife in that fashion, in my mind.”
Murdaugh left the courtroom wearing a brown jumpsuit and handcuffs and was released into the custody of the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Murdaugh started being processed at a reception and evaluation center in Columbia Friday, according to a news release from the department. That included having his head shaved as part of the department’s standard procedures, according to department spokesperson Chrysti Shain. His processing over the next month and a half will include medical tests and mental health and other assessments that will help decide which maximum-security prison he will be sent to, the department said.
No victim impact statements
Typically, sentencing hearings include victim impact statements but there were none on Friday. Instead, the hearing stood out for Newman’s direct exchanges with Murdaugh, whose defense, the judge said, represented “an assault on the integrity of the judicial system.”
“I don’t question at all the decision of the state not to proceed the death penalty,” Newman told Murdaugh.
“But as I sit here in this courtroom and look around (at) 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 a death penalty probably for lesser conduct.”
“Remind me of the expression you gave on the witness stand…,” the judge said to Murdaugh.
“A tangled web we weave,” Murdaugh said, repeating a line from his testimony.
“What did you mean by that?”
“It meant when I lied, I continued to lie.”
“And the question is when will it end?” Newman said. “This ended already for the jury because they’ve concluded that you continued to lie and lie throughout your testimony.”
The judge noted Murdaugh’s longtime addition to painkillers.
The killer, Newman told Murdaugh, “might not have been you. It might have been the monster you become when you take 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 opiate pills. Maybe you become another person. I’ve seen that before.”
Jury verdict came in less than three hours
After more than a month and dozens of witnesses, jurors took less than three hours Thursday to convict Murdaugh of two counts of murder in the June 2021 killings, as well as two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
“Justice was done today,” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said in a Thursday night news conference. “It doesn’t matter who your family is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or people think you have. It doesn’t matter … how prominent you are.
“If you do wrong, if you break the law, if you murder, then justice will be done in South Carolina.”
The case brought national attention – including Netflix and HBO Max documentaries – to Murdaugh, the former personal injury attorney whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather served as prosecutors for a portion of southern South Carolina from 1920 to 2006.
Prosecutors had argued Murdaugh’s motive for the killings was to distract and delay investigations into his growing financial problems. They homed in on a history of deceit, arguing he stole millions of dollars from his former clients and law firm and lied to cover his tracks – theft and lies that Murdaugh admitted in court.
The defense after the verdict asked for a mistrial, but Newman denied it, saying the jury had gotten enough time to consider the evidence – and the evidence of guilt was “overwhelming.”
The defense also attacked the investigators on the case, claiming the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division had “failed miserably” and even fabricated evidence.
‘The evidence was clear,’ juror says
It took the jury less than an hour to reach the unanimous decision that Murdaugh was guilty, juror Craig Moyer told ABC News.
“The evidence was clear,” said Moyer, the first on the panel to speak publicly about the trial.
The jury began its deliberations with a vote: “It was two not guilty, one not sure and nine guilty,” he said Friday, adding his vote was guilty from the start.
“Everybody was pretty much talking, about 45 minutes later … we figured it out,” he said.
With little to no direct evidence tying Murdaugh to the scene, including no eyewitnesses, the prosecution largely relied on circumstantial evidence, including phone and vehicle tracking systems suggesting Murdaugh’s movements the night of the killings.
And prosecutors pointed to another lie that played a key role in the case: a video clip that placed Murdaugh at the murder site shortly before the killings, despite his repeated assertions throughout the investigation that he was not there.
The video, recorded by Paul near the family’s dog kennels shortly before the time prosecutors say they were killed, captured Alex Murdaugh’s voice in the background, nearly a dozen friends and family members testified.
Murdaugh then testified the voice was his – and that he’d lied to investigators about his whereabouts because he grew paranoid, which he blamed on his addiction to opioid painkillers.
Moyer, the juror, was surprised when Murdaugh acknowledged the voice heard in the video moments before the murders was his own, he said.
It was that fact that convinced Moyer that Murdaugh was guilty, the juror said.
Moyer said the defense argument that Murdaugh didn’t have enough time to commit the crimes and clean up wasn’t convincing.
Murdaugh was “a good liar,” Moyer said, “but not good enough.”
“I didn’t see any true remorse or compassion or anything,” he added, noting when Murdaugh took the stand, “He didn’t cry. All he did was blow snot.”
In the end, “it was the victim, Paul Murdaugh, who solved his own murder,” Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Florida’s Palm Beach County, told CNN Thursday night about the trial.
In a separate case that has not yet gone to trial, Murdaugh faces 99 charges stemming from a slew of alleged financial crimes, including defrauding his clients, former law firm and the government of millions.
Murdaugh’s former law firm – which renamed itself Parker Law Group in light of his actions – called Thursday’s verdict a step toward justice. Several members of the law group testified during the murder trial.
“The actions of Alex Murdaugh are shocking to us all. Tonight’s verdict, which was rendered after a thorough and fair trial, brings justice and some closure to this awful matter,” the firm said on Facebook. “Maggie and Paul died tragically and for reasons we may never fully comprehend. They were much beloved, and we will forever mourn their loss.”
CNN’s Adrienne Vogt, Melissa Alonso, Eric Levenson, Alta Spells and Raja Razek contributed to this report.