FACTS
A South Carolina judge said she will rule by the end of next week on a defense request to dismiss the Alex Murdaugh murder indictments, after a hearing Friday, Nov. 13, at the Lexington County Courthouse. Murdaugh’s lawyers argued that the lead state agent gave a grand jury false information about blood evidence, while prosecutors from the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office said nothing false was knowingly presented. Murdaugh is set to be retried April 5, 2027, in Sumter County in the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
Hearing on the Murdaugh murder indictments
Judge Debra McCaslin heard about two hours of arguments and other pretrial matters before taking the motion under advisement, WLTX reported in a story to which The Associated Press contributed. McCaslin told the defense the motion carries “a pretty high burden and it’s your burden.” She said she expects to issue a written order and get it to both sides by Friday of next week.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin asked that the indictments be dismissed without prejudice, which would let prosecutors present the case again to a Colleton County grand jury. That grand jury next meets Dec. 10. “What we’re asking, Your Honor, is a reboot,” Griffin said.
What the defense argues
The defense says former South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Senior Agent David Owen, the only witness before the grand jury that indicted Murdaugh in July 2022, told jurors an expert had found blood spatter on Murdaugh’s white T-shirt and that DNA from Murdaugh, Maggie and Paul was on it, according to WLTX. Griffin said SLED’s own confirmatory tests in August 2021 found no human blood on 12 stained areas of the shirt, and that a November 2021 lab report said the same.
Griffin also said Owen wrongly told the grand jury that shotguns at the family’s property were loaded like the shells used to kill Paul. Griffin said the blood spatter claim was central to the case. “It’s the only thing that puts him there,” he said. According to The State, Griffin said of Owen, “He should have known that was not true.”
Owen retired in 2024. He has acknowledged mistakes but denied intentionally misleading the grand jury, the AP reported, according to WLTX.
What prosecutors argue
Creighton Waters of the Attorney General’s Office told the judge, “The case law is very clear that there is no error in the grand jury presentation” when it reflects what agents understood at the time, WLTX reported. Waters said SLED access logs show Owen did not open the November 2021 lab report until Nov. 30, 2022, and that the state gave it to the defense days later. Griffin said the defense already had it through a court-ordered download of lab files.
Waters said blood stain expert Tom Bevel still stands by his opinion and that challenges to it go to “classic weight, not admissibility.” He said Owen’s description of the shotguns was imprecise but not “overtly false.” He said the grand jury also heard other evidence, including a kennel video from Paul Murdaugh’s phone, and that the spatter claim took only a few lines of the presentation. The State reported that Waters called the blood evidence “a side issue” that was not used at the 2023 trial.
In a written response filed Nov. 6, prosecutors said “there is simply no evidence of an effort to intentionally mislead the Colleton County Grand Jury,” WEAR reported.
Why there is a retrial
A jury convicted Murdaugh in 2023, and he was sentenced to life in prison. On May 13, 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial, finding that Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill had improperly influenced jurors, the SC Daily Gazette reported. Some jurors said Hill told them to watch Murdaugh closely and “not to be fooled” by his lawyers. Attorney General Alan Wilson said then, “No one is above the law and, as always, we will continue to fight for justice.”
Murdaugh remains in prison on sentences for financial crimes, according to the Gazette.
McCaslin also set a Jan. 20, 2027, hearing in Sumter on a juror questionnaire, according to The State. Friday’s hearing was the last in Lexington County before the case moves to Sumter.
More coverage is in the Stay Current News U.S. section.
Photo: File photo of the Lexington County Courthouse in Lexington, South Carolina. Ralph Hightower / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
