Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for the June 2021 murders of his wife and son.
Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife Maggie Murdaugh and 22-year-old son Paul Murdaugh on Thursday, after only a few hours of jury deliberation.
The life sentence culminates Alex Murdaugh’s stunning fall from grace over the past two years. Murdaugh came from a prominent South Carolina family of lawyers, several of whom served as top prosecutors in the area.
“You have … a lawyer, a person from a respected family who has controlled justice in this community for over a century,” Judge Clifton Newman said on Friday, as he handed down Murdaugh’s sentence. “A person whose grandfather’s portrait [hung] at the back of the courthouse that I had to have ordered removed in order to ensure that a fair trial was had.”
Newman also made note of the prosecution’s decision not to seek the death penalty in the case as he considered Murdaugh’s family history.
“I don’t question at all the decision of the state not to pursue the death penalty,” the judge added. “But as I sit here in this courtroom and look around the many portraits of judges and other court officials and reflect on the fact that over the past century your family, including you, have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom, and many have received the death penalty, probably for lesser conduct.”
The investigations into the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh began when Alex Murdaugh called the police on June 7, 2021, claiming that he found his wife and son dead after returning home from a visit with his mother. Over a year later, Murdaugh was charged with the murders.
Prosecutors argued at trial that Murdaugh committed the murders to distract from his financial crimes, while the defense criticized investigators’ handling of the crime scene and the lack of physical evidence.
Near the end of his five-week trial, Murdaugh took the stand and admitted to lying about his whereabouts on the night of the murders.
The admission came after prosecutors had uncovered a video from Paul Murdaugh’s phone that placed his father at the dog kennels on the family’s Colleton County property with him and his mother that night. Alex Murdaugh had previously claimed that he had not been at the kennels that evening, where the two family members were eventually found dead.
However, Murdaugh maintained that he did not kill his wife and son, claiming instead that he was driven by paranoia due to his opioid addiction.
Murdaugh’s legal troubles will not end with Friday’s sentencing, as he faces nearly 100 counts of financial crimes, including embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion. He admitted on the stand at trial to stealing from his clients and law partners.
Updated at 11:47 a.m.