RICHLAND COUNTY, S.C. — Alex Murdaugh's defense team and state prosecutors will be back in court Tuesday for a status conference, another step in Murdaugh’s attempt to get his murder conviction thrown out and to receive a new trial.
This comes after allegations regarding Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill's conduct during the murder trial last year, where his attorneys claim she cautioned the jury ahead of Murdaugh taking the stand in his own defense.
That status conference will start at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday at the Richland County Judicial Center. News 19 will be in the courtroom and will provide continuing coverage throughout the day on air and online.
“This is probably going to go down as the most storied trial we've ever had in the history of our state,” attorney Eric Bland said. “This case seemed to have had so much that garnered the attention of the entire world.”
Bland and his law partner Ronnie Richter have been involved in the Murdaugh case since 2021, representing the victims of Murdaugh’s financial crimes.
“We've had a long, long history involved in these cases since 2021,” Bland said.
Most recently, Bland is representing four of the jurors who found Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife and son back in March.
“This jury returned a verdict in a resounding fashion in three hours,” Bland said. “They didn't just say Alex was guilty. They just basically said he was incredibly guilty. But at the same time, we want to make sure that the only person in that courtroom that can give direction and orders to the jury is the judge and essentially the clerk of court is there as a liaison between the judge and the jury.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys say Hill tampered with the jury, making prejudicial comments against their client.
The first step in determining if that's true is Tuesday's status conference. The American Bar Association explains it as a conference that comes after all initial pleadings have been filed to “help the judge manage the case” and “establish a time frame for pre-trial activities.”
Justice Jean Toal, who’s presiding in the case, will meet with the defense and the prosecution ahead of the main hearings that begin Jan. 29 and are expected to last for three days. It’s during those hearings later this month that we’ll hear testimony on why Murdaugh does or does not deserve a new trial.
On Tuesday, Toal will set the ground rules for those hearings.
“It's the rules of the road is a status conference," Bland said. "A judge is going to want to hear from the parties, maybe from some of the other people, whether it's the press, if it's going to be open to the press. Justice Toal’s going to be mindful on not inconveniencing or setting up jurors so that their identities can be revealed and that they could start to be harassed by the public. [Toal] is going to lay out the format. She'll say what time things begin, who does what, what she is willing to entertain. I think the media is going to play a big role.”
Also, Bland says Toal will decide if the defense is able to issue subpoenas to go through the jurors phones, emails and other personal communications.
News 19 spoke to former US attorney and defense attorney Pete Strom — who is not related to this case — to get his legal opinion on what’s to come.
“Courts don't like to reverse juries. A lot of work and time has gone into this case,” Strom explained. “The other side, the defendant’s got a right to a fair trial. I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that there's gonna be a new trial. I haven't seen it all. I've read what's been reported, I get the legal arguments, but one word one way or the other during this evidentiary hearing would change my mind.”
“When it comes to the jurors, it seems like that the procedure that the state and the defense have agreed is that Justice Toal is going to question the jurors on whether they have, what they recall, if any, Becky Hill had done, what she had said,” Bland detailed. “And she appears to be going to do that in camera, which means in chambers, so that would be outside the viewing of the public, outside of the viewing in the media.”
Protecting the jurors’ privacy is why Bland says he’s representing some. In the case that the defense tries to issue subpoenas, Bland explains he intends to file a “motion to quash.”
“Depending on the arguments of Harpootlian and Griffin, if they say, ‘Look, we cannot adequately advance the positions of our client unless we have the opportunity to discover.’ They're going to say they want to depose, take a deposition of these jurors. They're going to want to find out what they have to say,” Bland predicted. “I don't want [jurors’] identities to be known in public. I don't want them to be harassed, they want to go back to their lives. And Justice Toal is certainly competent to ask them the questions that she needs to get the answer she wants. We just want her to ask those questions in a way that ensures identification can be preserved.”
“The public usually doesn't see how sausage gets made,” Bland described. “They just see the final product and now you're seeing really, really hard-nose, body-checking lawyering being done by the defense and the state.”
Justice Toal was selected to preside in this matter after Judge Clifton Newman, who ruled over the initial Murdaugh trial, recused himself.
“I think there's a lot of discussion about whether Justice Toal is a good choice for this,” Strom said. “I thought Judge Newman just did a phenomenal job. I mean, I thought he did a civics lesson for the world on how a jury trial should be conducted.”
When it comes to Toal, Strom says she is a “different person.”
“She is not as calming as Judge Newman, but good God she's smart, and she doesn't have to read their briefs because she knows the law,” Strom said. “She is a walking law encyclopedia. And she’s going to do what she thinks is right and what the law is in South Carolina and I think at the end of the day, there'll be people who don't like what she does, or says one way or the other.”
Bland echoed the same sentiment.
“Justice Toal will ask questions, and they'll be very, very pointed questions and they'll be relevant questions,” Bland said, citing her time serving as an appellate judge. “She has a robust personality. She is of high intellect, probably the smartest judge that our state has ever produced. Her intellect is second to none and it has a way of intimidating lawyers and litigants. She likes to have the give and take back and forth with lawyers and sometimes she can get frustrated with lawyers in how they answer. You know, she just owns her courtroom. I don't know another way of saying it. It's her court.”