The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously overturned Alex Murdaugh's 2023 convictions for the murders of his wife and son and ordered a new trial, ruling that the Colleton County clerk of court tampered with the jury that sent the disbarred lawyer to prison for life.
The 5-0 decision wipes out the verdict from a six-week trial that drew the largest streaming audience of any U.S. court proceeding and resets one of the South's highest-profile murder cases. Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison on a separate 40-year federal sentence for financial crimes, and state Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office would seek to retry the case.
What the court found
The justices held that former clerk Rebecca "Becky" Hill spoke to jurors during the 2023 double-murder trial in ways that pushed them toward conviction. According to the opinion, Hill told jurors to "watch his body language" on the day Murdaugh testified, called it "an epic day," and, in the account of one juror cited by the court, urged them not to be fooled by the defense. The court wrote that Hill "placed her fingers on the scales of justice, thereby denying Murdaugh his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury."
Murdaugh's lawyers Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said the ruling described Hill's conduct as "breathtaking," "disgraceful," and "unprecedented in South Carolina." Hill pleaded guilty in December 2025 to obstruction of justice, perjury and two counts of misconduct in office, and was sentenced to three years of probation.
The original case
Murdaugh was convicted in March 2023 of shooting Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh at the family's hunting estate in Islandton, S.C., on June 7, 2021. He had insisted he was not at the scene, but a cellphone video recorded by Paul minutes before the killings captured Murdaugh's voice at the kennels. No murder weapon was recovered, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after roughly three hours of deliberation.
What comes next
Wilson, who is running for governor and whose term ends in January, said "my Office will aggressively seek to retry Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul as soon as possible." Harpootlian has told reporters the defense will seek a change of venue. The justices also cautioned the trial court that prosecutors had been allowed to go "far too long and far too deep" into Murdaugh's financial crimes, warning against similar prejudice on retrial.
The opposing view
Not every juror said Hill's comments mattered. According to the Supreme Court's own opinion, two jurors testified that her remarks did not influence their verdicts, an account prosecutors leaned on in arguing the original conviction should stand. A separate juror, however, swore in an affidavit that "I had questions about Mr. Murdaugh's guilt but voted guilty because I felt pressured by the other jurors." Wilson said his office "respectfully" disagrees with the decision but will press ahead with a retrial, signaling the state still views the evidence against Murdaugh as overwhelming.
A second Murdaugh murder trial is unlikely to begin before late 2026, and the property where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed has since been sold and subdivided.