But legal experts say it was ultimately a costly maneuver for the scion of the well-connected Murdaugh clan, which prosecuted crime for three successive generations across the state’s rural low country.
“Being a skilled attorney, I think he thought he could outsmart the jurors,attorney and legal affairs commentator Areva Martin said.
On Friday, one week after Murdaugh, 54,
spent hours on the witness stand trying to convince a jury of his innocence, he was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders of his
wife and son.
“He had to testify. There were too many lies,” CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson said Saturday. “Obviously the jury felt that he was conning them.”
Murdaugh’s biggest lie perhaps was denying for a year and half that he was anywhere near his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, when they were fatally shot on the family’s Islandton property on June 7, 2021.
On the stand, Murdaugh maintained he didn’t kill them but found their bodies after returning from a brief visit to his sick mother that night.
A key piece of evidence came from Paul Murdaugh, who
recorded a video moments before he was gunned down and killed. It showed a family dog near the kennels on the property. It also captured his father’s voice in the background, placing Alex Murdaugh at the scene of the crime.
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