Alex Murdaugh's Attorneys Urge Judge to Toss Original Murder Indictment — After Convicted Killer Granted New Trial for the Deaths of Wife and Son
Alex Murdaugh wants murder indictments charging him with killing his wife and son thrown out.
Nov. 13 2026, Published 6:00 p.m. ET
Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh have asked a judge to throw out his original murder indictments for killing his wife and son, arguing the chief investigator in the case lied to the grand jury, RadarOnline.com can report,
Murdaugh was shockingly granted a retrial after the judge ruled that a former County Clerk tampered with jurors during his original March 2023 case.
Alex Murdaugh's Defense Claims an Official 'Lied' to a Grand Jury
The disgraced lawyer was back in court on November 13 to argue a top official lied to jurors.
In court on Friday, November 13, Murdaugh's attorneys claimed South Carolina investigator David Owen, who led the murder investigation, misled a grand jury about blood spatter evidence on Murdaugh's T-shirt, alleging laboratory tests did not confirm the presence of human blood, and that the findings were not properly disclosed to them.
Defense lawyers said that as prosecutors sought indictments against Murdaugh, Owen told the Colleton County grand jury that blood was found on the shirt the 58-year-old was wearing the night of the killings.
An earlier report found there were no blood stains, and no such evidence was introduced at trial.
"We were convinced to our souls that this test was false," Murdaugh’s attorney said, referring to the blood-spatter analysis. "The grand jury was misled greatly when they returned this indictment," the lawyer said.
Prosecutors Countered Any 'Mistakes' Were Not Enough to Toss the Case
Murdaugh is accused of killing his wife and son to cover up other crimes.
Prosecutors pushed back on the allegations, arguing that investigators shared what they thought was accurate evidence at the time, and that any "mistakes" were not significant enough to justify dismissing the entire case.
"There’s no instance here of a discovery violation or something of significance that was hidden from the defense," Prosecutor Creighton Waters insisted.
Judge Debra McCaslin said she would issue her ruling at a later date.
Even if the request to dismiss the indictments is granted, it may not stop or even postpone an April retrial for the disgraced lawyer. Prosecutors can seek another set of grand jury indictments, and defense attorneys said they won't stop them.
Alex Murdaugh is Already in Jail for Other Crimes
Their bodies were discovered on their large South Carolina property.
Murdaugh is spending decades in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients and has admitted in court that he is a thief and an insurance fraudster, but he is not a killer.
However, prosecutors said Murdaugh killed his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, on their sprawling property in the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2021, allegedly to cover up a decade of financial deceit and drug addiction. He claimed he stumbled upon their bodies upon returning home from a visit to his mother.
But a cellphone video taken by his son on the night of the murders confirmed Alex was at the crime scene. According to prosecutors, the disgraced former attorney killed his wife and son at around 8:49 p.m. and then attempted to create an alibi by calling Maggie's phone and sending a text message.
Alex Murdaugh Has Been Granted a Redo
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Murdaugh was granted a retrial after another officials tampered with jurors during his original trial.
Murdaugh had been handed two consecutive life sentences for fatally shooting his wife and son, but in a bombshell decision, former Colleton County Clerk Rebecca Hill was found to have tampered with the jurors during the original 2023 trial in an effort to promote a book she had written about the case.
During the trial, Hill reportedly told jurors "not to be fooled" by Murdaugh's own emotional testimony in hopes that he would be convicted to help her make money from her self-published book, Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders. The book was later pulled from publication after she reportedly admitted to plagiarizing part of it.
Murdaugh's attorneys claimed the would-be crime author tried to influence jurors, and was heard by another employee rationalizing, "The best way to sell books was a guilty verdict. A guilty verdict would be better for the sale of books."
The clerk resigned in March 2024 after she was charged with taking more than $11,000 in bonuses and using her public office to promote the book.
