5 Murdaugh trial takeaways from Week 5: Alex denies murders, admits lies to investigators
After five weeks sitting at the defense table and listening to dozens of witnesses testify in his double-murder trial, Alex Murdaugh’s watershed moment finally arrived: He took the stand in his own defense.
The risky move opened him up to intense cross-examination about his personal history of lies, deceit and theft of millions from clients and his law firm, but also gave him a valuable chance to tell his own tale and potentially resonate with the jury that will decide his fate.
But other important details were discussed in the two days leading up to Murdaugh’s time on the stand, including a defense theory about the potential height of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s killer or killers, and an attempt to claim Maggie Murdaugh’s cell phone, found about a half-mile from the scene, wasn’t thrown there by Alex Murdaugh.
Here are the top five takeaways from Week 5 of the trial:
Alex admits wrongdoing, but denies murders
From the beginning of his testimony, Alex Murdaugh admitted he had done wrong by many of his clients, family and close friends.
“Did you lie to {South Carolina Law Enforcement Division] Agent [David] Owen and Deputy Laura Rutland on the night of June 7, and told them you stayed at the house after dinner?” Murdaugh’s defense attorney, Jim Griffin, asked soon after Murdaugh took the stand.
“I did lie to them,” Murdaugh admitted immediately. “And I’m so sorry that I did. ... I’m sorry to my son Buster, I’m sorry to grandma and Papa T. I’m sorry to our families. And most of all, I’m sorry to Mags and (Paul). I would never do anything to intentionally hurt either one of them.”
During cross-examination, Murdaugh continued to say that he took advantage of his clients for years, admitting to dozens of financial crimes he hadn’t yet been convicted of under oath.
The strategy was part of the defense’s attempt to humanize Murdaugh and damage the prosecution’s efforts to describe him as a cunning, deceitful criminal mastermind.
The one thing he never gave ground on, however, was his innocence in Paul and Maggie Murdaugh’s murders.
“No, I did not,” Murdaugh responded when Griffin asked whether he’d used a shotgun to “blow his son’s brains out.”
“I would never hurt Maggie,” Murdaugh told Griffin. “I would never hurt Paul ... I can promise you, I would hurt myself before I hurt one of them.”
Prosecution hammers Murdaugh’s history of lies
While taking the stand allowed Murdaugh to potentially connect with jurors emotionally, it opened him to intense scrutiny by lead prosecutor Creighton Waters.
Prosecutors took advantage of that by digging deep into Murdaugh’s extensive history of lies and deceit, urging the jury to question why they should believe a single word of his testimony. Waters also pointed out that Murdaugh, as an experienced lawyer himself, would understand how to craft an alibi and seed reasonable doubt of his guilt.
Waters opened his cross-examination by discussing in great detail Murdaugh’s years of stealing from his clients, at times listing off individual names of people Murdaugh had represented, suggesting that for over a decade he sat down with “real people,” looked them in the eye and lied to them while claiming to be on their side.
“Mr. Waters, you have charged me with the murders of my wife and son. I can’t tell you all the details of these financial situations. I can tell you I did steal money that wasn’t mine,” Murdaugh said at one point, “And I did wrong. It was terrible what I did.”
“You may want to get through this quicker, but we’re not,” Waters told him, continuing to establish his history of deceiving people close to him. “Of all the people on here, all these exhibits, do you have any independent recollection of a time where you sat down, and looked that person in the eye, and you were lying to them and convincing them that everything was OK while you stole their money, do you remember even one of them?”
Murdaugh did not concede details of a specific conversation during his testimony.
Murdaugh also testified he lied to his close family and friends about his addiction to opioids, which began in the early 2000s after several surgeries resulting from a knee injury playing football at the University of South Carolina.
Alex says he lied because of pills, prosecutors dispute that
Murdaugh struggled with his painkiller addiction for about 20 years, he testified, adding that it would cause him occasional bursts of paranoia that he could usually do away with “in a matter of seconds.”
The trauma of his wife and son’s deaths, Murdaugh said, made it impossible to do so on the night of June 7, 2021. Because of those “paranoid thoughts,” he said, he lied to SLED investigators about his whereabouts that night.
Murdaugh testified he’d also come to distrust the entire SLED agency due to their involvement in bringing charges against a close friend of his, charges he felt were unjust.
But in bodycam footage from the first Colleton County Sheriff’s Office responders to the scene, Murdaugh was recorded telling the same lie he later shared with SLED.
“At that point in time, SLED was not there. No one had gotten (gunshot residue) from you. Your law partners and Sheriff Hill were not there. No one had asked you about your relationships. [SLED special agent and lead investigator] David Owen was not there, but you still told the same lie,” Waters said during cross-examination.
“And all those reasons that you just gave this jury about the most-important part of your testimony (why he’d lied to investigators) was a lie, too. Isn’t that true, Mr. Murdaugh?” Waters asked.
“I disagree with that,” Murdaugh testified.
Defense says his height makes it unlikely Alex killed family
Forensic engineer Mike Sutton testified Tuesday that based on the angles bullets found at the crime scene would have traveled, it’s extremely unlikely Alex Murdaugh fired the shots that killed Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
After examining a pair of bullet holes at the scene, one in the side of a quail cage and the other in an outdoor dog house, Sutton said the trajectory of shotgun pellets that killed Paul Murdaugh was more consistent with a 5-foot-2 shooter aiming the murder weapons from their hip than the 6-foot-4 Alex Murdaugh.
“It makes it very unlikely that a tall person made that shot,” Sutton said.
The .300 Blackout bullet paths that killed Maggie Murdaugh, Sutton said, were consistent with someone around 5-foot-10 or simply somebody moving their rifle to shoot.
“Again, there’s a variable here, of course,” Sutton qualified his answer.
The prosecution’s primary rebuttal was the possibility of someone entering a kneeling stance to shoot. While Sutton said his calculations had considered that, prosecutor David Fernandez spent several minutes using Sutton’s measurements for how far off the ground he expected the gun was for different shots, and then crouching in front of a tape measure to display how a taller killer might make those shots.
Fernandez mockingly referred to Sutton’s theorized 5-foot-2 shooter as a “little 11-year-old.”
Maggie’s phone may not have been thrown from car
Another early-week defense witness, digital forensics expert Micah Sturgis, attempted to discredit prosecutors’ theory that Alex Murdaugh tossed his wife’s phone out his car window while driving away from Moselle after the slayings.
It takes “very little” movement for an iPhone’s screen to light up on its own, Sturgis said. Defense attorney Phillip Barber demonstrated this for the jury by showing how even lifting one’s phone off a table can make the screen activate.
At the end of the prosecution’s case, they introduced a lengthy and thorough timeline of phone activity from Alex, Maggie and Paul Murdaugh’s cellphones on June 7, 2021. That data included records of when their phone screens came on, when the phones were unlocked, and when they received text messages or calls.
Since Maggie Murdaugh’s cellphone screen did not come on when Alex Murdaugh’s SUV passed the area where it was later found by investigators, the defense argues, it’s unlikely that Murdaugh threw it from his car.
The prosecution countered, saying that different operating systems on an iPhone can affect whether the phone is set up to have its screen light up based on movement rather than a button press.
The case is expected to go to the jury sometime next week, but there will be no time limits on closing arguments.
This story was originally published February 25, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "5 Murdaugh trial takeaways from Week 5: Alex denies murders, admits lies to investigators."