Alex Murdaugh due back in court amid defense questions about police handling of missing murder weapons

By Nicki Brown, Dianne Gallagher, Devon M. Sayers, CNN

(CNN) — Alex Murdaugh is due back in court Friday as his lawyers push for South Carolina prosecutors to turn over information and evidence they say could be instrumental to the disgraced attorney’s defense in his second double-murder trial.

In court documents filed ahead of the hearing, Murdaugh’s defense attorneys pressed prosecutors for further evidence, including information about bombshell reports that local police may have handled the murder weapons hours after Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and their 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot at the family’s estate, Moselle, in 2021. The murder weapons have never been found.

The defense said the allegations are “exculpatory,” undermining prosecutors’ theory Maggie and Paul were killed by a perpetrator who acted alone.

The hearing Friday comes as the defense has filed a flurry of motions ahead of Murdaugh’s highly anticipated retrial, which is set to begin on April 5 after the prominent former personal injury attorney’s murder convictions were overturned by the state supreme court. It’s unclear which motions will be addressed Friday.

The retrial will be held in nearby Sumter County due to concerns Murdaugh would be unable to get a fair trial in Colleton County, where his first trial was held in 2023.

During the weekslong trial, prosecutors painted Murdaugh as a fraudster who killed his wife and son as a desperate attempt to distract from investigations into his vast financial crimes.

Across two days of dramatic testimony, Murdaugh denied shooting the two, though he admitted lying to investigators about his whereabouts the night of the murders. The jury convicted Murdaugh of all counts.

But the state supreme court overturned Murdaugh’s convictions earlier this year after finding the trial was tainted by the county clerk’s “improper” influence on the jury. The decision was a shocking twist in the high-profile case, which has gripped the public for years and sparked several true crime podcasts, books and documentaries.

In its ruling, the court vacated the two life sentences Murdaugh received for the murder charges, though he remains behind bars on concurrent state and federal sentences of 27 and 40 years for dozens of financial crimes.

Defense says local news reports undercut prosecution’s case

At trial, prosecutors argued Murdaugh alone killed Maggie and Paul with two of their family’s guns – a shotgun and a .300 Blackout assault rifle, according to testimony. They theorized he later transported the weapons to his mother’s home in Almeda and disposed of them.

But in a court filing on September 30, the defense said recent local news reports challenge this theory: Citing The Post & Courier, the defense claimed a Lowcountry official told state investigators months after Murdaugh’s conviction in 2023 that a local police chief had spoken of arriving to the scene early and providing the defendant a change of clothes. This official also believed the weapons were taken to the police station and stored there temporarily, The Post & Courier reported.

The allegation, defense attorney Richard Harpootlian wrote, undermines the state’s case.

“It is exculpatory of the theory that the State tried: if the weapons and the clothing left the scene in the hands of law enforcement officers, they did not leave in Defendant Murdaugh’s hands, and they did not go to Almeda,” Harpootlian wrote.

The defense argued the information also calls into question the integrity of evidence collected from the crime scene, and “supports the defense that more than one person was involved in these murders—a defense the State’s own investigation now appears to credit.”

A South Carolina grand jury heard testimony regarding the allegations last month, the defense said, citing an article from FITSNews.

“Witnesses have testified that the Chief of Police of the Town of Yemassee, Greg Alexander, was seen with the murder weapons in the immediate aftermath of the June 7, 2021, killings, and that a second Yemassee officer is under investigation for transporting and concealing weapons and clothing,” the defense wrote.

An attorney for Alexander confirmed his client received a subpoena but said he ultimately did not testify in front of the grand jury. Joe McCullough told CNN the police chief has been drawn into the “Murdaugh maelstrom” and did not improperly remove any evidence.

Alexander responded to the crime scene after scores of other officers, his attorney said, leaving “no opportunity” for the chief to surreptitiously transport evidence.

“Mr. Alexander had nothing to do with taking evidence or concealing it,” McCullough told CNN. “Friday’s hearing will demonstrate the lack of substance to these despicable rumors.”

Harpootlian pointed to prosecutors’ recent statements saying they were not aware of any discovery issues – a statement they made to the judge just 17 days before Alexander’s grand jury subpoena was issued.

“If the reports are accurate, the State has held, since 2023, a witness statement that a police officer handled the murder weapons and the clothing Defendant Murdaugh was said to have worn, and it has never disclosed that statement to the defense,” the defense attorneys wrote.

In their own filing, prosecutors wrote Alexander and Murdaugh are “extremely close,” but did not substantially address the allegations, noting grand jury proceedings are secret.

“The State cannot prematurely confirm or deny the contents of any State Grand Jury investigation until when appropriate,” Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor, wrote.

Defense requests further DNA testing and state shooting data

Murdaugh’s attorneys are also requesting information they believe could point to another perpetrator, including further DNA testing on a few pieces of evidence and state data on crimes committed with the same kind of assault rifle used in Maggie’s killing.

The defense attorneys argued analysts should conduct further DNA testing on three pieces of evidence they say contain male DNA: two of Maggie’s fingernail clippings and her cell phone, which was found along the road roughly half a mile from where the bodies were found at the property’s kennels.

The state, however, said there was “nothing ‘new’ or recently discovered” about the DNA from the fingernails, and expressed concern further testing would destroy the samples. They would be “happy to consider steps” for further testing of the phone once they receive more details about the defense’s request, prosecutors wrote in their response.

Murdaugh’s legal team also asked for South Carolina Law Enforcement Division data about other crimes involving .300 Blackout ammunition – the same bullets used to fatally shoot Maggie.

At trial, the state called a law enforcement witness whose testimony was intended “to persuade the jury that the .300 Blackout was uncommon enough that its appearance at Moselle pointed to the household that owned three of them, and away from anyone else,” the defense wrote.

However, prosecutors later said the cartridge is the second-most popular rifle round in the country and SLED had entered more than 700 cases involving the weapon into its database since 2021, the defense wrote.

“Evidence that the same weapon, or the same ammunition, has been used in other shootings in the same two circuits is evidence tending to point to another person as the perpetrator,” Harpootlian said in the filing.

Specific shootings referenced in the defense motion did not return any potential matches to Murdaugh’s case, prosecutors said.

“Because the defense cannot establish a logical or factual nexus between the two crimes, the motion represents a speculative fishing expedition for public consumption that lacks legal relevance, creates an unwarranted burden and intrusion into state forensic resources,” Waters wrote in his own filing.

Prosecutors also said in court documents they would turn over raw cell phone data and 3D scans from the kennels that the defense requested.

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