State of South Carolina v. Richard Alexander Murdaugh was the trial of American former lawyer Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife, Maggie , and their year-old son, Paul , on June 7, The trial in the fourteenth circuit of the South Carolina Circuit Court began on January 25, , and ended on March 2 with a guilty verdict on all four counts.
Local media called the trial South Carolina 's " trial of the century " and "arguably one of the most high-profile and sensational cases in South Carolina legal history.
Alex Murdaugh is a member of the Murdaugh family , a family of attorneys prominent in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. Alex called his wife Maggie 52 on June 7, , and asked her to meet with him at the Murdaugh family hunting lodge in Islandton , purportedly so that the two of them could travel together to see Alex's father, Randolph Murdaugh III , who was terminally ill. Maggie texted a friend, saying her husband sounded "fishy" and was "up to something. Murdaugh claimed that at the time of the killings he had been with his mother, who has dementia ; [ 9 ] however, cellphone data, including video containing Alex's voice, placed him at the scene before the murders.
Murdaugh was arrested in July after a Colleton County grand jury issued an indictment charging him with two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the deaths of Maggie and Paul. The indictment stated that Alex shot his wife with a rifle and his son with a shotgun. Murdaugh's trial began January 25, , at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro , with instructions from the judge and opening statements from the prosecution and defense.
Creighton Waters, chief prosecutor for the grand jury, led the prosecuting team against Murdaugh. Defense counsel argued that the prosecution should be prohibited from asking questions related to Murdaugh's financial crimes but the judge overruled their objections and announced he would make a formal ruling on the matter on Thursday, February 2, The judge said that he needed to hear more testimony privately before ruling whether these witnesses would be allowed to testify before the jury.
