LEXINGTON, S.C. — The judge in Alex Murdaugh’s murder retrial decided Friday to move the case out of the rural South Carolina county where it consumed life for six weeks in 2023.
Murdaugh’s conviction and life sentence for killing his wife and son were overturned in May by the South Carolina Supreme Court after the justices ruled a court clerk may have influenced the jury.
More details have not been released. After the trial, Kelly took a job with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office but was fired for harassment and improper conduct. The judge agreed Friday to move the retrial out of Colleton County, where the killings happened and the first trial brought throngs of media and true crime fans, overwhelming the few restaurants and hotels in the county of 40,000 people. The judge said she wants to take her time and research hotels and courtroom availability for the retrial set to begin on April 5. At that point in 2021, he was close to being exposed by both his law firm and the family of a teen who filed a wrongful death suit after Paul crashed a boat while drinking.
Because he was not a security risk even though Murdaugh remains behind bars serving a 40-year federal sentence and a 27-year state sentence after pleading guilty to stealing about $12 million from clients and his family’s law firm, murdaugh was in a coat and tie Friday after Judge Debra McCaslin ruled he didn’t have to wear a prison jumpsuit. Because of all the publicity of the first trial, the circumstances of the court clerk tainting the first jury and the Murdaughs’ connections to the surrounding community, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were chief prosecutors and the family’s law firm dominated for a century, mcCaslin said she had to move the trial. Because he believed sympathy over their deaths would buy him time to fix his financial crimes, prosecutors say Murdaugh shot his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, who was 22,.
