Will Alex Murdaugh be retried? What’s next after murder conviction overturned
The most dramatic South Carolina legal saga of the 21st century got its latest twist Wednesday when the S.C. Supreme Court overturned disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 murder conviction.
The decision will surely reignite the drama surrounding Murdaugh and the 2021 shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul — a sordid family and legal controversy that has drawn international attention to a formerly sleepy corner of the Palmetto State Lowcountry — as the case potentially heads back to court once again.
Here’s what the decision means and what will happen next for Murdaugh.
Why has Alex Murdaugh’s conviction been overturned?
The reason boils down to the conduct of former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill, who managed the courthouse in Walterboro where the trial was held and — the Supreme Court justices found — improperly influenced the jury in Murdaugh’s trial.
“Both the State and Murdaugh’s defense skillfully presented their cases to the jury as the trial court deftly presided over this complicated and high-profile matter,” the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday said. “However, their efforts were in vain because Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice, thereby denying Murdaugh his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury.”
Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin argued before the court in February that Hill made improper comments on Murdaugh’s guilt to jurors before they reached a decision. Hill herself later pleaded guilty to perjury and misconduct charges and received probation.
“Our justice system provides — indeed demands — that every person is entitled to a fair trial, which includes an impartial jury untainted by external forces bent on influencing the jury toward a biased verdict,” the justices ruled.
The order issued Wednesday was signed unanimously by all five justices of the state Supreme Court.
Murdaugh’s defense team praised the decision.
“The Supreme Court’s decision today affirms that the rule of law remains strong in South Carolina,” Griffin and Harpootlian said in a statement issued to The State. “The Court found that Becky Hill’s conduct during the trial attacked Alex Murdaugh’s credibility and his defense. The Court rightly described her conduct as ‘breathtaking,’ ‘disgraceful,’ and ‘unprecedented in South Carolina.’ ”
Will Murdaugh receive a new trial?
The Supreme Court’s decision voids the conviction for which the former attorney was sentenced to two life sentences. It also remands back to the Fourteenth Circuit court for any future actions, including a new trial.
Whether and when that trial will happen is now up to the S.C. Attorney General’s office and the team, led by prosecutor Creighton Waters, who conducted Murdaugh’s trial in the first place. The prosecutors would have to secure a new indictment against Murdaugh and go through the entire trial process again — a potentially lengthy and expensive process.
Attorney General Alan Wilson, who is campaigning for governor, announced quickly Wednesday that his office will seek to retry Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul.
“While we respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision, my Office will aggressively seek to retry Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul as soon as possible,” Wilson said in a statement. “No one is above the law and, as always, we will continue to fight for justice.”
Murdaugh, now serving his time in a maximum security prison in McCormick County, has maintained that he is innocent of the murders of his wife and child and would presumably fight the charges again all the way to another jury trial without pleading guilty.
Will Murdaugh get out of jail?
Wednesday’s ruling does not, however, mean Murdaugh is about to walk free. Since his 2023 murder conviction, Murdaugh has pleaded guilty in both state and federal court for a string of financial crimes he committed while a member of his family’s law firm.
Murdaugh has admitted in court — including on the witness stand at his murder trial — that he stole millions from his former law partners and many of his clients, many vulnerable people in tragic circumstances who had depended on Murdaugh for financial restitution.
Murdaugh has been sentenced to 27 years in state prison for his financial crimes, and received a separate 40-year sentence for the same offenses in federal court. Both would be enough to keep Murdaugh behind bars throughout any retrial on his murder charges.
Why a retrial will be different
While the Supreme Court avoided making any decisions on Murdaugh’s other complaints about his initial trial, they did issue one finding that could change how a retrial plays out.
The first trial featured lengthy testimony about Murdaugh’s financial crimes, even though the former attorney had not yet been tried or convicted on those allegations. The state argued that the pressure of the possible exposure of those crimes motivated Murdaugh to commit the murders.
The justices largely agreed with Judge Clifton Newman’s decision to admit evidence supporting that argument, but said it became too big a part of a trial that was supposed to be about Murdaugh’s culpability for murder.
“(W)e unanimously hold the trial court allowed the State to go far too long and far too deep into aspects of Murdaugh’s financial crimes that were not probative of the State’s theory of motive, which gave rise to considerable danger of unfair prejudice, and therefore should have been excluded,” the justices ruled.
The court’s ruling cites prosecutors soliciting sympathetic testimony from Murdaugh’s financial victims — unrelated to the murder allegations — that could have prejudiced jurors against Murdaugh regardless of the evidence of who was responsible for the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
“By our calculation, the State spent a total of 12.5 hours of actual testimony before the jury over ten days of trial to introduce evidence related to Murdaugh’s financial crimes,” the Supreme Court decision said. “We are convinced the State could have effectively presented evidence to support its motive theory in a fraction of that time.”
Griffin and Harpootlian said the ruling will ensure that the retrial will play out differently than the initial one.
”The Court held that this evidence went far beyond what was necessary and gave rise to unfair prejudice,” Murdaugh’s attorneys said. “On retrial, that will not be permitted.”
The court did not issue any explicit guidelines for how the financial crimes should be handled in a retrial, leaving that up to the discretion of the trial judge. But they did warn that it could not be as prominent a part of any new trial.
“(I)f the trial court decides to admit evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes on retrial, the State must complete its introduction of that evidence efficiently without the lengthy presentation of inflammatory details with little to no probative value that was permitted in the first trial,” the ruling says.
Judge Newman, who was otherwise widely praised for his calm and even-handed handling of Murdaugh’s six-week murder trial, has since retired from the bench and will not return to handle Murdaugh’s retrial.
”Alex has said from day one that he did not kill his wife and son,” Griffin and Harpootlian said in a statement. “We look forward to a new trial conducted consistent with the Constitution and the guidance this Court has provided.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 11:56 AM with the headline "Will Alex Murdaugh be retried? What’s next after murder conviction overturned."
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