Alex Murdaugh is set to return to a South Carolina courtroom Friday as his defense presses to toss the murder case and narrow what evidence jurors can hear in a retrial that one former federal prosecutor says comes with a new strategic reality: the defense has “played all their cards.”
The disbarred attorney is scheduled to appear before Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin at 10 a.m. in Lexington County for a pretrial hearing ahead of his April 2027 retrial in the killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
Unlike Murdaugh’s June court appearance, which set a retrial timetable, Friday’s hearing follows a flurry of motions from both sides revealing their competing strategies.
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The disputes range from a defense effort to dismiss the murder indictments outright to battles over whether prosecutors can again introduce evidence of Murdaughs financial crimes, use testimony he gave during his first trial and present other evidence to a new jury.
Nathan S. Williams, a South Carolina federal criminal defense attorney and former assistant U.S. attorney who served as criminal chief for the District of South Carolina, told Fox News Digital that a second trial changes the strategic landscape for Murdaugh.
“There is no surprising the government or the state at trial,” Williams said. “He’s given his testimony, they can prepare infinitely now to cross-examine him.”
“That tends to be frankly more helpful for the state. I think they usually have a better chance on retrial,” he added, while noting that limits on some of the state’s evidence could cut the other way.
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Murdaugh, 58, was convicted in 2023 of murdering Maggie, 52, and Paul, 22, at the familys Moselle estate in Colleton County in June 2021. The South Carolina Supreme Court later overturned the convictions after finding that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill improperly influenced jurors.
The high court ordered a new trial, but the retrial may look significantly different from the first.
At Murdaughs first trial, prosecutors argued that years of theft and financial fraud were closing in on him and that the killings were an effort to distract from mounting scrutiny.
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The South Carolina Supreme Court did not rule that all evidence of Murdaughs financial wrongdoing was inadmissible, but it said prosecutors had been allowed to go too far into the details during the first trial.
McCaslin will now be tasked with determining how much of that evidence can be presented to jurors the second time around.
Williams said he expects the amount of financial evidence to shrink from the first trial. He said, “there will definitely be less,” adding, “How much less I think will
