A hearing Friday for Alex Murdaugh, the disbarred South Carolina lawyer facing a second murder trial in the 2021 deaths of his wife and son, likely will address a clash over the defense’s request to move the retrial from his rural home county to Charleston.
The venue fight is among a wave of motions – including his lawyers’ request to dismiss the 2022 murder indictments over allegations an investigator presented fabricated evidence, and their request for independent testing of DNA evidence – that Circuit Court Judge Debra McCaslin could address Friday as the case heads toward an April trial.
Murdaugh, 58, is expected to appear in court for the status hearing in Lexington, the latest in a sprawling legal saga about the June 2021 fatal shootings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, outside their family home in the small Colleton County community of Islandton in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
Murdaugh, a personal injury attorney from a Lowcountry legal dynasty, was convicted of murder in March 2023 after a six-week trial, with prosecutors alleging he killed Maggie and Paul to stave off investigations of financial crimes authorities said he committed against his law firm and clients. He admitted on the stand that he lied about his whereabouts, but denied killing the two. He was sentenced to life in prison.
