In a trial followed with huge interest in the USA, the well-known lawyer Alex Murdaugh has been found guilty of double murder. The jury saw it on Thursday in Walterboro in the state of South Carolina as proven that the 54-Year-old shot his wife and son. The lawyer faces a life sentence.
It took the jury less than three hours to reach their decision. With their guilty verdict, they followed the accusations of the public prosecutor's office. The lawyer, who belongs to a prominent family of lawyers, shot his 52-year-old wife Maggie and his 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021 at the family's hunting estate in South Carolina.
"The evidence is overwhelming," Judge Clifton Newman said. He announced that he wanted to impose the sentence on Friday. For each of the two murders, Murdaugh faces at least 30 years in prison, but it can also be sentenced to life imprisonment for both crimes. "Today's ruling proves that no one — and really no one — is above the law," said prosecutor Alan Wilson.
Lawyer admits lie
The defendant himself showed little reaction to the guilty verdict. He was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs after the jury's verdict. The lawyer had alerted the police in 2021 and declared that he had found the bodies. Later, however, he himself came under suspicion - and was finally charged with double murder in July 2022. The trial caused enormous interest in the USA, television stations broadcast almost daily from the courtroom.
Murdaugh has denied the crimes. However, he had to admit in court that he had lied about his presence at the scene. On a cell phone video that his son Paul recorded shortly before the fatal shooting, his voice can be heard.
Murdaugh had stolen millions of dollars from his law firm, from clients and even from the family of a former domestic worker, who had collected an insurance sum after the death of the woman in a fall. He needed the money, among other things, to finance his opioid addiction.
Man Should Kill Murdaugh
According to the prosecution, Murdaugh feared in the summer of 2021 that he would soon be exposed – and wanted to prevent this with the murder of his wife and son and buy time. A few months after the double murder, he paid a man to kill him and his other son would collect a life insurance policy of ten million dollars. Murdaugh was only injured by the shot and survived. He admitted to investigators that he had paid the perpetrator.
The trial against the lawyer, which started in January, caused enormous media interest in the USA, with news channels broadcasting almost daily from the courtroom. Just recently, the streaming service Netflix released a much-watched series entitled "The Murdaugh Murders: Scandal in the Southern States".
It is also about another case: The murdered son Paul had been involved two years earlier in a boating accident in which a 19-year-old had died. Paul Murdaugh was charged with driving the boat while drunk.