Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill, seen right here as prosecutor Creighton Waters makes closing arguments within the Alex Murdaugh trial, is accused of improperly influencing jurors within the high-profile homicide case.

Joshua Boucher/The State by way of AP, Pool

conceal caption

toggle caption

Joshua Boucher/The State by way of AP, Pool

Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill, seen right here as prosecutor Creighton Waters makes closing arguments within the Alex Murdaugh trial, is accused of improperly influencing jurors within the high-profile homicide case.

Joshua Boucher/The State by way of AP, Pool

Alex Murdaugh needs a brand new trial over the murders of his spouse and youthful son, submitting courtroom papers that accuse the clerk of courtroom in Colleton County, S.C., of tampering with the jury who discovered him responsible.

Murdaugh, the disbarred legal professional and scion of a once-influential household, was sentenced to life without parole in March for the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, after jurors discovered him responsible within the 2021 slayings. He additionally faces a raft of charges over alleged monetary crimes throughout his years practising regulation.

Defense attorneys for Murdaugh, 55, have already launched an attraction of the homicide verdict. Now they’re trying to put that effort on maintain to allow them to pursue a brand new trial altogether, alleging that Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill violated her oath of workplace in addition to their consumer’s constitutional proper to a good trial and neutral jury.

Here’s a fast information to this newest twist within the Murdaugh homicide case:

Hill is accused of ‘improper feedback and efforts to affect the jurors’ verdict’

Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin accuse Hill, who was elected in 2020, of telling the jury “not to be fooled” by the protection group’s case. They additionally say that when Murdaugh was about to testify, Hill warned jurors to “watch him closely.”

Hill didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark or a response to the brand new submitting.

In one other critical cost, the protection attorneys allege that Hill “invented a story about a Facebook post to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty.”

The courtroom submitting additionally seeks to lift suspicions about what it calls Hill’s “frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson.” But as South Carolina legal professional Sarah A. Ford and authorized director for a victims’ help program noted via X (previously Twitter), quite a lot of mundane circumstances might immediate non-public conversations between a clerk of courtroom and a jury chief, together with medical appointments and scheduling points.

Murdaugh’s group additionally accuses Hill of pressuring jurors as they started deliberations, allegedly telling them, “this shouldn’t take us long.”

In the protection’s narrative, Hill was allegedly motivated by two important components: the removing of “a juror she believed might not vote guilty”; and her personal self-interest, in publishing a e-book concerning the trial and taking part in media protection. Hill lately printed the e-book she co-authored; Amazon currently lists it as a greatest vendor.

The submitting references 2 sworn affidavits from jurors

The protection submitting references statements from 4 jurors — however in two of these cases, the jurors didn’t signal the affidavits that quote them. Rather, their feedback are offered by Holli Miller, a paralegal from Harpootlian’s regulation agency who signed the affidavits.

In Juror No. 741’s case, the submitting stated, the feminine juror initially agreed to signal the affidavit, however Murdaugh’s attorneys had been “unable to arrange with her a suitable time and place.” The lack of the opposite juror’s signature was not defined.

The jurors who signed their very own affidavits embrace Juror No. 785, who was dismissed from the jury by Judge Clifton Newman over “improper conversations” with folks not concerned with the case. To these following the case, the dismissed juror grew to become often known as “the egg lady,” as a result of she made positive to take eggs residence along with her that one other juror had introduced in.

In the Murdaugh group’s telling, Hill questioned Juror No. 785 a couple of Facebook publish concerning the trial and the juror that it says was wrongly attributed to her ex-husband.

But because the submitting mentions in a footnote, Juror No. 785’s habits was additionally scrutinized over one other incident, after a co-worker of the juror’s tenant wrote to the courtroom to say she “had expressed an opinion” concerning the case throughout a go to to the tenant.

Murdaugh’s group needs an evidentiary listening to

The submitting was made on Tuesday with the South Carolina Court of Appeals — which then gave prosecutors a 10-day deadline to file their response.

Harpootlian and Griffin argue that there’s sufficient proof of jury tampering to warrant an evidentiary listening to — the following step of their bid to show the jury was unfairly biased.

If the attorneys can substantiate their claims towards Hill, it might put a heavy burden on the prosecution to show “that such contact with the juror was harmless to the defendant,” Murdaugh’s group says within the submitting, citing a authorized precedent.

The presumption of prejudice stemming from improper contact with a juror “is even stronger where the contact was made by a court official,” the submitting states. Citing one other precedent, it provides, “a new trial must be granted unless it clearly appears that the subject matter of the communication was harmless and could not have affected the verdict.”

Murdaugh was lately disciplined over jail insurance policies

The movement for a brand new trial was filed per week after Murdaugh was punished for violating jail insurance policies relating to his entry to the skin world.

Over the summer season, the South Carolina Department of Corrections says, legal professional Griffin recorded Murdaugh throughout a cellphone name so he might give the recording to the producers making a documentary about his case. And when Murdaugh’s cellphone privileges had been revoked, they are saying, he used one other inmate’s PIN quantity to make one other name — committing one other coverage violation.