"Please do not share this call," the Colleton County Sheriff's Office wrote in an email sent after the audio had been shared widely on TikTok.
lawandcrime.com
3/20/23
A jailhouse recording of convicted double murderer
Alex Murdaugh speaking with one of his defense attorneys was released over the weekend – a recording that appears to have been made sometime during Murdaugh’s recent Colleton County, S.C., trial in the shooting deaths of his wife and son.
[..]
Hidden True Crime, in a February open records request, asked for “any and all jail phone calls made, placed by” Richard Alexander Murdaugh while in the custody of the sheriff’s office, the Colleton County Jail, or the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, their
South Carolina state Freedom of Information Act request says.
Lauren Matthias explained that the recording, along with 28 other phone calls that were “mostly hang-ups,” was released by the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office late last week. The call between Murdaugh and Griffin was posted on TikTok in order to elicit additional information about the exchange from court watchers, Matthias said.
Typically, conversations between attorneys and their clients are protected by the
attorney-client privilege – which protects and is determined by the client; often a client must raise the privilege or have their attorney raise it on their behalf.
Murdaugh’s attorney on the call, for his part, confirmed he was the other person and expressed outrage over the turn of events.
[..]
Law&Crime reached out to Griffin and a representative for Murdaugh’s legal team about the audio but no response was immediately forthcoming.
Law&Crime also reached out to the CCSO for information about why they felt the call did not originally merit such protections but no response was immediately forthcoming.
In an email sent to Hidden True Crime the day after the audio was originally shared on TikTok, the CCSO requested the phone call not be shared.
“It has come to our attention that one of the calls released through the FOIA response falls under attorney/client privilege,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a March 18 email to the outlet. “Please do not share this call.”