A South Carolina judge dominated Tuesday that every one 12 jurors from Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial will have to testify at his coming jury tampering listening to.
The three-day evidentiary hearing to decide whether or not Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill tampered with the jury, that’s scheduled to begin January, 29, could pave the manner for Murdaugh — who’s serving consecutive existence sentences for the murder of his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul — to get a brand new trial.
Murdaugh’s protection lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, alleged on listening to that Hill turned into inspired to stress jurors to supply a guilty verdict to boost income for an e-book, and she turned into making plans to post approximately the case.
Former country Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, who took over felony moves related to Murdaugh’s appeal last month after the trial’s choose, Clifton Newman, agreed to step down, dominated Tuesday, saying that Hill might be required to testify but warned Harpootlian approximately the scope of the protection’s questioning.
“This isn’t the trial of Becky Hill,” Toal said.
Hill submitted a signed affidavit in November denying all claims made by using the protection, but the defense will now have the opportunity to question her in an open court docket.
“I did not tell the jury ‘not to be fooled’ by proof offered by Mr. Murdaugh’s legal professionals,” Hill stated, defending her moves. “I did not educate the jury to ‘watch him closely.’ I did not coach the jury to ‘have a look at his movements.’ I did not coach the jury to ‘have a look at his movements.’”
Hill is a co-author of the ebook “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders,” posted in July. It informs Hill’s experience overseeing this kind of fundamental trial and her circle of relatives’s history with the Murdaughs, whose circle of relatives patriarchs had wielded electricity as the pinnacle prosecutor in South Carolina’s coastal Lowcountry.
Hill is under investigation in connection with ethics proceedings, and last month she apologized for plagiarism in her ebook. According to Murdaugh’s protection, Hill told jurors “no longer to accept as true” Murdaugh for the duration of his two days of testimony and forced jurors to reach a brief verdict. The protection argues that that motivated the jurors’ verdict and that consequently, Murdaugh must be granted a new trial.
Murdaugh looked at ease inside the courtroom Tuesday, at times smiling and chatting with his attorneys, but his mood quickly turned very serious while Toal started laying out what she could and might now not allow in her court docket.
At the hearing, Toal ruled that every one of the 12 jurors who convicted Murdaugh of homicide may be required to testify as part of their witness testimony. She ruled that their faces will now not be broadcast through the cameras in the room and that the court will take extra steps to make sure their identities remain nameless. Toal stated she might be the only one carrying out the wondering for the jurors.
Toal also ruled that the juror known as the “Egg Lady” could now not be allowed to testify for the defense. The “Egg Lady” juror was brushed off days earlier than the start of the trial for fallacious conversations outside the court docket; however, she requested in the courtroom whether or not she should first retrieve the dozen eggs a fellow juror had delivered in for the group.
That might be taken into consideration as a chief setback for Murdaugh’s group, because a key piece of evidence it offered was a written affidavit from the “Egg Lady” juror pronouncing Hill engaged in beside-the-point conversations.
Toal also denied the protection’s request to probably interview Newman, the retired judge, and attorneys concerned with the trial.
Regardless of what happens along with his attraction, Murdaugh will remain in jail. In November, he was given a 27-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to 22 counts of financial crimes against his customers; it will run at the same time as his federal sentence for similar financial crimes that he pleaded responsible for in September.
