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Alex Murdaugh seeks new trial, claims clerk of court tampered with jury [1]

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Date: 2023-09-06

Back in 2013, the five former New Orleans cops convicted for their roles in the Danziger Bridge shooting had their convictions thrown out. Federal judge Kurt Engelhardt found that the verdicts were irrevocably tainted because federal prosecutors in New Orleans had used anonymous online accounts to attack the defendants and post running commentary of the trial. In other words, high-tech witness intimidation and jury tampering. Even though there was no doubt those cops were guilty and deserved every second of the sentences they originally received, you simply cannot tolerate that kind of behavior in a criminal trial.

It’s possible that we may be witnessing a similar development in the case of disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted earlier this year for the murders of his wife and son. On Tuesday, Murdaugh’s lawyers put their appeal of the convictions on the backburner. Instead, they’re seeking a new trial, arguing that the local clerk of court improperly influenced the jury. If this is true, we may have another situation where two things are true at the same time—a manifestly guilty defendant who nonetheless may have been denied a fair trial.

Murdaugh’s defense team, led by state senator and former state Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian, detonated this legal bombshell at a press conference on Tuesday morning. Murdaugh’s lawyers claim that their client’s convictions were tainted by misconduct on the part of Rebecca Hill, the clerk of court in Colleton County west of Charleston.

Harpootlian said at a news conference Tuesday that they collected sworn testimony from two jurors and interviewed a third to learn that Hill, an elected official serving her first term, had had "improper, private communications" with some jurors outside the courtroom. "They're not someone who should ever talk about the case," Harpootlian said of the clerk. "I've never heard it happen, and I've been doing this a very long time."

Harpootlian was speaking from his experience as both a prosecutor and as a defense attorney; in the early 1990s, he was the solicitor (as district attorneys are called in South Carolina) for a judicial circuit that covers most of Columbia.

According to Columbia NBC affiliate WIS, the motion for a new trial accuses Hill of telling jurors not to believe defense arguments, pressuring them to reach a quick verdict, and outright lying to the judge. One of Murdaugh’s lawyers, Jim Griffin, said that the news of Hill’s book angered several jurors and persuaded them to come forward. One provided an affidavit saying that Hill told the jury “not to be fooled” by the defense’s case, and another claimed Hill told the jurors not to let the defense “mislead” them.

WIS obtained a copy of the motion; read it here. It’s pretty shocking. It claims Hill entered the jury room fairly often, and notes several passages in Hill’s book, Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders, that suggest she told jurors on more than one occasion she believed Murdaugh was guilty. When the jury got the case, one of the jurors claimed that Hill told them that “this shouldn’t take us long,” and that they wouldn’t be allowed smoke breaks until they reached a verdict. Harpootlian was so unnerved by Hill’s behavior that he asked the U. S. Attorney for South Carolina, Adair Ford Burroughs, to look into whether Hill violated Murdaugh’s right to a fair trial.

The folks at “Law & Crime Daily” took a close look at that motion. Watch here.

Defense attorney Brian Buckmire said that if there’s anything at all to the defense’s claims, there’s a “presumption of prejudice. The onus would be on the prosecution to prove that Hill’s behavior was harmless, and Buckmire thinks the prosecution would have a steep climb to prove that it was harmless. Former litigator Terri Austin thinks that Hill is potentially in “a lot of trouble” if she did the things the defense claims she did. Besides being brought up for ethics violations, she could potentially face fines and even jail time.

Buckmire, Austin, and host Jesse Weber were also intrigued by the defense’s claim that Hill improperly got a juror bounced over a Facebook post that might not exist. On the day after Murdaugh finished his testimony, Hill—or “Miss Becky,” as she’s often called—claimed to have found a Facebook post that suggested a juror was talking about the case outside court. She couldn’t find the original, but one of her employees found what was supposedly an apology post by the juror’s ex-husband before Murdaugh testified. Hill collared the juror in her office and accused her of talking about the case with her ex-husband while she was drunk, going as far to say that she’d sent law enforcement to the ex to question him—and the ex supposedly confirmed everything. But not only did the ex-husband, Tim Stone, deny that in an affidavit, but the apology was posted by someone with the same name. In the defense’s telling, Hill knew all of this and still lied to the judge.

Buckmire was flabbergasted, saying that the defense is accusing Hill of engaging in behavior way, way outside the realm of what a clerk of court should do—and raises questions about other cases Hill touched since she was elected. It’s hard not to agree.

The real travesty here is that if Hill indeed engaged in this misconduct, it was completely unnecessary. Murdaugh had claimed for almost two years that he wasn’t anywhere near the kennels at his country estate, but a Snapchat video from his son, Paul—one of the victims—taken minutes before the shootings features Murdaugh’s voice in the background. Murdaugh subsequently admitted he had lied to police when they interviewed him—thus blowing apart his alibi.

However, even manifestly guilty people have rights that must be respected. And if Hill indeed did what the defense claims she did, this must be investigated—and Murdaugh may be entitled to a new trial.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/6/2191879/-Alex-Murdaugh-seeks-new-trial-claims-clerk-of-court-tampered-with-jury

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