Alex Murdaugh’s defense team has expressed a sense of “cautious optimism” regarding the possibility of securing a new trial for the disgraced former attorney. Murdaugh’s lawyer, Dick Harpootlian, shared this outlook as they prepare for the upcoming hearing before the South Carolina Supreme Court scheduled for February. The high-stakes legal battle has captivated public attention due to its complex layers and serious allegations.
Harpootlian, alongside co-counsel Jim Griffin, revealed that the court will be examining two consolidated appeals during the oral arguments on February 11. The first appeal challenges a legal decision made during Murdaugh’s 2023 murder trial, while the second focuses on allegations against Court Clerk Rebecca “Becky” Hill, accused of tampering with the jury.
“The appeals are twofold,” Harpootlian explained in a conversation with Fox News Digital. “One involves the standard legal technicalities that typically accompany any appeal, and the other, quite unusual, questions whether the court clerk engaged in actions or made statements that swayed the jury towards a guilty verdict.”
In March 2023, Murdaugh was found guilty of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and his youngest son, Paul, at the family’s hunting estate in South Carolina’s picturesque low country in June 2021. He received a life sentence without the possibility of parole, a dramatic fall from grace for the once-prominent attorney.
Central to the second appeal are allegations against Hill, who is accused of making inappropriate remarks to jurors that the defense argues were designed to secure a guilty verdict. This aspect of the appeal adds a layer of intrigue and complexity, as jury tampering claims are relatively uncommon and could significantly impact the outcome of the legal proceedings.
The second appeal centers on Hill, who was accused of making comments to jurors during the trial that defense attorneys say were intended to influence a guilty verdict.
Hill pleaded guilty in Colleton County Circuit Court to four charges — obstruction of justice and perjury for showing a reporter photographs that were sealed court exhibits and then lying about it — as well as two counts of misconduct in office for taking bonuses and promoting through her public office a book she wrote about the trial.
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Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Hill to a year of probation. He told Hill her sentence would have been much harsher had prosecutors found that she had tampered with the Murdaugh jury. Harpootlian said Hill’s guilty plea bolsters the defense’s argument that her credibility is irreparably damaged.
“She pled guilty to perjuring herself, to lying under oath during that hearing,” he said. “I think that goes a long way to showing in appellate court that whatever she said shouldn’t be believed.”
Alex Murdaugh talks with his defense attorney Jim Griffin during a jury-tampering hearing at the Richland County Judicial Center, Jan. 29, 2024, in Columbia, South Carolina. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool)
During the evidentiary hearing, multiple witnesses testified that Hill made comments to jurors about Murdaugh’s demeanor and testimony, including statements that defense attorneys argue crossed the line from administration into influence.
Hill has denied trying to sway jurors, but Judge Jean Toal ruled last year that the defense failed to prove the comments affected the verdict. Harpootlian said the defense disagrees with that standard.
“The United States Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit have indicated we don’t have to show that it actually influenced somebody,” he said. “We just need to show that she said things that reasonably, objectively could have influenced a juror.”
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian listens to John Marvin Murdaugh during the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro on Feb. 27, 2023. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post and Courier/Pool)
Asked whether the defense team was surprised by Hill’s guilty plea and sentence, Harpootlian said the Murdaugh team is “cautiously optimistic” in their bid to get a retrial.
“There are a couple dozen different issues that have to be addressed,” he said. “Any one of which could give us a new trial. We’re cautiously optimistic, but you don’t know until you get there and hear their questions.”
“The integrity of the system matters,” Harpootlian said. “And that’s what this appeal is really about.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Hill’s attorney, Will Lewis, for comment.
Harpootlian discusses the Pee Wee Gaskins case and his shifting perspective on the death penalty in his new book, “Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer who Seduced the South,” co-authored with Shaun Assael. (Handout)
Harpootlian’s comments come as he promotes his new book, “Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South,” a true-crime account of one of South Carolina’s most infamous serial killers, Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. The book chronicles Harpootlian’s firsthand experience prosecuting Gaskins, who was executed in 1991 after confessing to at least 13 murders. He disposed of his victims’ bodies in the swamplands of coastal South Carolina.
While the cases differ dramatically, Harpootlian said decades inside South Carolina courtrooms have given him a perspective on how the justice system operates.
In the book, Harpootlian describes Gaskins as a far more complex figure than the “two-dimensional” monster portrayed in court.
“The court and the jury saw a two-dimensional Pee Wee Gaskins, which was horrifying enough,” Harpootlian said. “But he three-dimensionally was much more complicated.”
Dick Harpootlian prosecuted Pee Wee Gaskins in the 1980s. (Handout)
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Gaskins, a self-described killer who bragged about his crimes, cultivated a reputation in his hometown of Sumter as a friendly, helpful man.
“He appeared to be affable, gregarious,” Harpootlian said. “Everybody that knew him thought he was just a wonderful, friendly guy.”
“What people think they know from documentaries or TV is often very different from what actually happens in the courtroom,” he said.
Dick Harpootlian began his career as a prosecutor in the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office in the 1980s. (Handout)
Harpootlian said he recently spoke with Gaskins’ daughter, Shirley, who turned her father in and testified against him at his first death penalty trial.
“She told me he had to be stopped,” Harpootlian said. “But she thinks about it every day. That was her father.”
In “Dig Me a Grave,” Harpootlian also grapples with the toll of working capital cases, including an episode shortly before Gaskins’ execution when the killer attempted to have Harpootlian’s young daughter, who was 4 years old at the time, kidnapped in a failed escape plot.
Despite his discomfort with the death penalty, Harpootlian said he did not attend Gaskins’ 1991 execution.
“What would I get out of that other than watching another human being die?” he said. “I regret every death, and I’m certainly not going to relish in it.”
