‘NOWHERE ELSE TO GO’

Murdaugh’s Defense Team Vows to Appeal After Life Sentence

“We were hoping to get a jury that could ignore the noise,” one of his defense lawyers said Friday.

Alex Murdaugh’s defense team on Friday vowed to appeal the disgraced former lawyer’s life sentence for murdering his wife and son in June 2021. In a press conference after Murdaugh’s sentencing, defense attorney Jim Griffin said his team expects to file a notice of appeal in the next 10 days on the grounds that Judge Clifton Newman improperly allowed their client’s alleged financial crimes to be shown to the jury. “It was about character. It wasn’t about motive,” defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said about the financial crimes, before noting that prosecutors “won this case the day the judge brought” the separate alleged crimes into the case. Griffin added that while their team stands behind Murdaugh’s decision to testify, they are disappointed that the Colleton County jurors could not “ignore the noise” of the media frenzy around their client and focus on the case. “Alex was not optimistic with all the scrutiny and the press and all of his bad acts being out there in the public” for a fair trial. Harpootlian agreed, saying that their team did not ask to try the case in another South Carolina county because “there was nowhere we could go.”

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Pilar MelendezSenior National Reporter

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