Alex Murdaugh suspended from legal practice by SC Supreme Court
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Alex Murdaugh Coverage
The Murdaugh family saga has dominated the news after another shooting, a resignation and criminal accusations — with Alex Murdaugh at the center of it all. Here are the latest updates on Alex Murdaugh.
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This story was first published Sept. 8, 2021.
Well-known South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was suspended from practicing law by the S.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Murdaugh, 53, was given an interim suspension, according to the high court’s order.
The order said Murdaugh had consented “to the issuance of an order of interim suspension in this matter” and was suspended under Rule 17(b) of the S.C. Appellate Court rules, which says:
“Upon receipt of sufficient evidence demonstrating that a lawyer poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the public or to the administration of justice, the Supreme Court may place the lawyer on interim suspension pending a final determination in any proceeding under these rules.”
Murdaugh is under investigation by his Hampton law firm for misappropriating money, the firm said Monday.
Murdaugh’s attorney, Jim Griffin, said on Wednesday that an interim suspension order is “fairly standard in cases where there are credible allegations of misappropriation of client funds, or where there is credible evidence that a lawyer is incapacitated due to substance abuse or mental illness or injury,” Griffin said.
Griffin said Murdaugh is being treated for substance abuse at a rehabilitation facility. Griffin declined to identify the facility, and said he did not know how long Murdaugh’s treatment would last. Murdaugh has had the abuse problem “for years,” Griffin said.
‘Enormous temptation’?
Murdaugh has been a highly respected member of the S.C. Bar, which has some 12,000 lawyer-members. He served 13 years on the governing body of the state’s trial lawyers association, called the S.C. Association for Justice, and was the group’s president in 2015-2016.
On Monday night, Murdaugh’s longtime law firm — Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth and Detrick — made a public announcement that he had resigned from the firm and “is no longer associated with PMPED in any manner.”
The firm said, “His resignation came after the discovery by PMPED that Alex misappropriated funds in violation of PMPED standards and policies.”
The firm also said it had notified law enforcement and the S.C. Bar.
“I think (financial misconduct) is universally one of the quickest tickets to being disbarred,” Robert Wilcox, a University of South Carolina law school professor and former dean, said on Wednesday.
Wilcox said S.C. legal authorities take seriously any allegations of misappropriating money because “our system depends on lawyers being able to hold people’s funds.”
He said what isn’t clear from PMPED’s statement was whether Murdaugh is accused of taking money belonging to the firm or belonging to clients.
Motivations for lawyers taking money vary, he said, and range from living beyond their means, debts growing to substance abuse or greed.
“There’s an enormous temptation a lawyer has to resist,” Wilcox said. “While they hold large sums of money, the money they hold is not often their own.”
Wilcox said a suspension like this is common, while the S.C. Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel begins to investigate Murdaugh.
According to rules governing lawyer conduct and the ODC, an arm of the Supreme Court, will investigate the allegations and forward to the Commission on Lawyer Conduct the accusations it believes to be founded.
The Commission on Lawyer Conduct — whose members are lawyers as well as some non-lawyers appointed by the Supreme Court — will then determine whether misconduct took place and recommend a sanction to the high court. The Court then examines the commission’s findings and makes a final, formal determination of whether there is misconduct and, if so, what any sanction will be.
The law firm likely made a report and gave it to the ODC, Wilcox said. The agency needs to figure out “what money was missing and how it came to be missing.”
The suspension comes one day after the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, which Murdaugh’s family ran for nearly a century, disavowed Alex Murdaugh as an authorized volunteer prosecutor. Murdaugh hadn’t prosecuted a case since 2019, but Solicitor Duffie Stone made it official due to the events of this weekend, Stone’s office said.
The family has experienced tragedy and turmoil this summer, as three family members died during the month of June.
In early June, Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son Paul were shot to death at his Colleton County estate. So far, the State Law Enforcement Division has not identified a suspect or made any arrests.
Shortly after, former 14th Circuit Solicitor Randolph Murdaugh III died of natural causes.
This story has been changed to clarify the disciplinary process of the Commission on Lawyer Conduct. It has also been corrected to list the correct dates that Murdaugh was president of the S.C. Association for Justice.
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 9:03 AM with the headline "Alex Murdaugh suspended from legal practice by SC Supreme Court."
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