The South Carolina court clerk at the center of Alex Murdaugh’s request for a new trial for the murders of his wife and son has denied all of the allegations that she tampered with the jury, as sta…
nypost.com
By
Melissa Koenig
Published Nov. 8, 2023, 10:41 a.m. ET
The South Carolina court clerk at the center of Alex Murdaugh’s request for a new trial for the murders of his wife and son has denied his allegations that she tampered with the jury, as state prosecutors ask a judge to throw out the disgraced scion’s request.
Rebecca Hill, the Colleton County clerk of court, claims Murdaugh’s allegations that she pushed jurors to convict him in the deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul include “numerous misrepresentations and false statements.”
“I did not tell the jury not to be fooled by evidence presented by Mr. Murdaugh’s attorneys,” Hill insisted in an affidavit filed Tuesday.
“I did not instruct the jury to ‘watch him closely.’ I did not instruct the jury to ‘look at his actions.’ I did not instruct the jury to ‘look at his movements.’ I did not say to the jury, ‘this shouldn’t take long,’” she claimed in the affidavit obtained by The Post.
She continued to deny each of the 26 allegations against her, writing: “During the trial, I did not tell members of the jury that the media would want to interview them at the end of the trial.
“During the trial, I did not hand out business cards to media personnel. I did not tell jurors, ‘Y’all are going to hear things that will throw you all off. Don’t let this distract or mislead you.’”
Murdaugh’s attorneys have argued that Hill “instructed them not to believe evidence presented in Mr. Murdaugh’s defense, including his own testimony,” “lied to the judge to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty,” and “pressured jurors to reach a guilty verdict quickly so she could profit from it.”
But state prosecutors dismissed Murdaugh’s claims in a 48-page response Tuesday, arguing that the one-time legal scion is advancing “a sweeping conspiratorial theory” and that “not every inappropriate comment made by a member of court staff to a juror rises to the level of constitutional error.”
They pointed to a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigation in which 10 of the 12 jurors who convicted Murdaugh said they did not feel influenced by court officials.
In fact, the prosecutors argued that Murdaugh’s only evidence of alleged misconduct stems from an affidavit from one juror who said he remembered someone telling him to “watch his body language” — which he said did not affect his verdict — and an alternate juror who was removed prior to deliberations for discussing the case.
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More at link. ~Summer
