Murdaugh defense attorney Jim Griffin rises at 9:55 a.m. to deliver the defense's closing argument. He said yesterday he expects to go for about 2 hours. He tells the jury he plans to try to address questions they might have after hearing all the evidence.
Griffin praises the jury for their patience and their service over six weeks in this case. He reminds the jury that they were required at the start of this process to presume the defendant innocent of these charges.
Griffin compares the jury’s job to reviewing an instant replay in a sporting event: The call on the field must stand unless the instant replay definitively proves the call was wrong. In criminal cases, Griffin stands, the call on the field is that the defendant is innocent.
Griffin: If the evidence in this case causes you to hesitate as you go to fill out your vote, “if there is any reasonable cause for you to hesitate when you write ‘guilty,’ then the law requires you to write ‘not guilty.’”
Griffin: In Scotland, jurors are given three options: guilty, not guilty, or not proven. In America, we’ve combined the last two. “Not guilty” and “not proven” are in the same bucket. Griffin is telegraphing that the words “not guilty” mean more than “innocent.”
I imagine that at some point, Griffin is going to also try to relieve the pressure on the jury to convict AM by reminding them that AM is going to jail for a very long time regardless of what they decide in this case. He's cooked on the alleged financial crimes.
Griffin is using the CCSO/SLED “no danger to the public” statement on 6/8/21 to argue investigators considered AM their prime suspect from day one of the murder investigation.
Griffin: “Does that tell you that on June 8, law enforcement had decided it had to be Alex Murdaugh? It’s a fair question for you to ask yourselves. It’s a question that has not been fairly answered in this trial.”
Griffin: “He is at the mercy of SLED to exclude him from the (investigative) circle. ... SLED failed miserably in investigating this case. And had they done a competent job, Alex would have been excluded from that circle a year ago, two years ago. But he would have been excluded”
Griffin: Remember the hair found in Maggie’s hands? We didn’t hear anything more about it. Was it tested? Was it sent off for analysis? There is no evidence of what, if anything, happened to the hair in Maggie’s hand. Was it from a struggle w/ the assailant? Was it her own hair?
Griffin: SLED didn’t take footprint impressions from the feed room. Experts on both sides both had Paul’s murderer standing on the concrete outside the feed room. “There should have been footwear impressions, but we’ll never know because it was not preserved. It was not taken.
Griffin asks why SLED investigators didn’t do a more thorough, professional search for evidence at the crime scene. He points back to the “no danger to the public statement.” “They had decided that unless we find somebody else, it’s gonna be Alex.”
Griffin: AM desperately wanted investigators to pull data from his Suburban on-board computer. He knew it would show he didn’t ditch Maggie’s phone. G: SLED failed to do that. They sent a subpoena via fax machine to somebody in Detroit at General Motors. We don’t know why GM ….
Griffin: ... replied that they didn’t have that data. Perhaps there was a number off in SLED’s request. But we know SLED didn’t follow up with GM on the lack of data. The state only got that data during this trial when GM reached out and provided it.
Griffin: They did not properly store Maggie’s phone to prevent location data from being overwritten. And so it was. You heard about faraday bags. They could have done that. “Had they done it, I hope we wouldn’t be here.”
Griffin has spent the first 30 minutes of his closing argument stressing the many perceived flaws in SLED’s investigation, trying to establish that a more thorough, professional probe would have found the real killer(s) and exonerated AM.
Instead, Griffin says, incompetent investigators reverted back to their original hypothesis - that AM did it - and tried to prove it.
Griffin says the 2021 roadside shooting made Alex Murdaugh an easy target. “From that moment, they started fabricating evidence against Alex." Griffin says he's a former state/federal prosecutor with friends in law enforcement. "I don’t make that claim lightly.”
Griffin: “They came up with a report that said Alex’s T-shirt had high-velocity blood spatter on it. … That means you’re within feet of a shooting.”
Then, when the defense proved that wrong, “they went from Mr. Bloody Shirt before this trial to Mr. Clean during this trial.”
Griffin: “And here we are with a Mr. Clean theory.” That AM washed off with a hose after brutally murdering Maggie and Paul and “he gets in a golf cart butt naked, I guess, driving to the house.”
Griffin moves on to the blue rain jacket evidence. Griffin says no one in the family recognized that jacket as AM’s or anybody else’s. Griffin also implies SLED misled John Marvin about where they found it, claiming it was recovered from “back on the property” at Almeda.
Griffin said people make mistakes when remember exact times all the time. But “it’s not all right for him to make mistakes about that.”
Griffin says major pieces of evidence that investigators presented to the Colleton County grand jury to get an indictment of Alex Murdaugh “weren’t true.” Blood spatter. GSR rain jacket hasn’t been connected to AM. The way shotguns were loaded at Moselle.
Griffin now attacking the state’s motive that AM killed Maggie/Paul to avoid scrutiny of his financial crimes. “He puts himself in the middle of a murder investigation, and he puts himself in the middle of a media firestorm. That’s their motive.”
Griffin plays the dog kennel video. “Four minutes later, the state would have you believe that Alex Murdaugh blew his sons brains out of his head after having a conversation about Bubba” and a chicken.
“There is nothing on that tape that indicates any strife, any conflict, any anger … anybody being afraid, anybody running, anybody scurrying. Nothing. It’s Maggie, Paul and Alex down at the kennel. That’s it.”
Griffin: The state’s theory of when Maggie/Paul died is that if you’re not touching your phone, you’re dead. If you don’t answer a text as soon as you receive it, you’re dead.
Griffin: Every witness who took the stand and actually knew them “testified under oath how much Alex adored Maggie.” Paul was Alex’s best friend. Griffin plays recordings of the state’s witnesses testifying about AM’s love for his wife and sons.
Griffin circles back to the state's theory of AM's motive for the slayings. “What kind of sense does that make?” Alex’s financial house was a wreck, so he goes and kills his wife and son?
Griffin raises his voice: “That is their theory of the case. If you don’t accept that beyond a reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, I submit the verdict has to be not guilty because there is no reason for him to do it, no reason whatsoever.”
Griffin: There was no great pressure on AM on 6/7/21. June 7 was no different than “any other day in the frenetic lifestyle of Alex Murdaugh. He had so many balls in the air.”
Griffin: Even if the state’s motive was valid, AM didn’t need to kill his wife and son because his father’s poor health and death would already buy him time from his law firm’s inquiries for about a month.
Griffin uses AM’s reaction to his Sept. 3, 2021, ouster from the law firm to counter the state’s motive. AM tried to have himself killed. “When Alex is at financial collapse, he doesn’t go kill somebody else. He tries to end it himself.”
Griffin on the investigation/prosecution: I hold the Attorney General’s Office in high esteem. But “sometimes, folks get caught up in a case.” They want to win. And they do what it takes to win.
We are on a 10-minute break.
