Hey Everyone,
Thank you for joining me for today’s live video chat with Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorney, Jim Griffin. (And, here’s the link to the ten minute video that concludes our chat, after Jim’s screen froze at 50 minutes). As I wrote yesterday, Alex Murdaugh’s convictions for murdering his wife, Maggie and his son, Paul, have been overturned by South Carolina’s Supreme Court. It’s a sensational twist in already sensational story.
So, here’s what I learned in our riveting conversation that I did not know previously:
Jim received an email in the midst of the last trial from a viewer in the Netherlands (the trial was live streamed). The emailer told him that he was a lip-reader and could understand everything Jim was whispering to his client, so he might want to cover his mouth. (Jim did from that point on).
The night before Jim was scheduled to give his closing statement, he received another helpful tip from a different viewer. The State had argued that Alex Murdaugh’s lack of concern for the whereabouts of his younger son, Buster, showed that he knew who had murdered Paul and Maggie, because otherwise he’d be concerned the murderer was coming for Buster, too. But this emailer pointed Jim to a section of video tape in which Alex asked the sheriff to get an escort for Buster. Jim hadn’t seen it. “I didn’t even have it in my outline,” he explains. But, after that he queued it up and played it.
He talks about the hate mail he has received in the wake of defending Alex Murdaugh - and shows us an example.
Jim describes the dramatic scene on the Saturday of Labor day weekend 2021 when Alex comes on board Jim’s boat and explains the depths of his financial crimes. (He embezzled more than eight million dollars from clients of his law firm, allegedly to pay for an opioid addiction). Jim wound up saying to him: “You will be going to jail for this.”
Jim takes behind the scenes as to what happened after the guilty verdict came in. He and Dick Harpootlian, his co-counsel received a “tip” suggesting they needed to talk to the jurors about possible interference by the court clerk, Becky Hill. Eventually they found a woman who told them that Hill had said to her: “the defense is going to put up their case and don’t be fooled by what
they do.” That was only the start of evidence they found about Hill’s efforts at “persuasion”.
He gets into what is likely to be different in the next trial.
He discusses pieces of evidence he felt were inconclusive, including the video on Paul’s phone of Paul looking at a dog, in which Alex’s voice can be heard. (He says it’s impossible to know the timing of that as it relates to Paul’s death because his phone ran out of battery). And he gets into the mishandling of Maggie’s cellphone by SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division). Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post covered Jim’s successful evisceration of SLED in the courtroom. I’d forgotten how many things the agency botched in the investigation. It’s worth reading here.
In our last ten minutes he discusses what happened when jurors went back to the scene of the murders at Moselle, the plantation owned by the Murdaughs (it has since been sold).
Buster Murdaugh, the surviving son, has asked for privacy as he tries to get on with his life. But he wants it known he supports his father 100 per cent.
Thank you Skutt Hope, Maureen, Levee, Tee Ree, Emma, and many others for tuning into my live video with James M. Griffin! Join me for my next live video in the app.
