Alex Murdaugh Was Denied WHAT Before His Retrial?!

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Let's go over to another topic that we're covering. Alec Murdaugh walked into a Lexington County courtroom in double shackles and an orange jumpsuit. His first appearance since the Supreme Court threw out his murder convictions. What happened over the next hour told you everything about how the defense is preparing for the April 5th of 2027 trial. Mark your calendars now, take off from work, get the kids out of school and get some popcorn. Eight new expert witnesses, first responder transcripts suggesting other people were at Moselle that night, a demand for DNA testing using the same lab that cracked the Kohberger case, and a fight over whether the defendant gets to look like a human being in front of the cameras. Bob Motta is with myself and Robin Drake as we break down all of this. Right now it's a lot of procedural motions. They're trying to plan this, and as we all know, most cases, so much of it takes place before the actual trial in terms of where this thing is going. One of the things that they're asking for for Alec is to have a laptop in prison. Not a crazy ask. I mean, he's got to be part of his defense as well. No other inmate gets one, but there's a lot of paper. There's boxes and boxes and boxes of paperwork, as it's been argued.
The judge said no, but she did offer a conference room instead. Harpootlian said without digital access to discovery, he'd need a year.
Is this a fair compromise there, Bob? Is it okay that he doesn't have a computer or are we already seeing them really tightening the noose around Alec in his own participation of his defense?

**Bob Motta** (1:50)
It's a tough call. Yeah, like the defendant should have access to the discovery in his case. Like, it's not unusual for defendants not to be left with discovery. You know, do I think that he should be given access maybe for certain periods of time where he has access to a laptop that has, you know, the flash drives or the hard drives, the external hard drives connected to it so that he can comb through it for a bit.
Do I think that he should be able to have a laptop in his computer 24-7? No. I don't think there's going to be a judge on the planet that would allow a defendant that kind of access.

**Robin Drake** (2:34)
He's still convicted of the other crimes.

**Bob Motta** (2:37)
Well, yeah.

**Tony Brueski** (2:38)
But different crimes.

**Bob Motta** (2:40)
Right, different crimes.

**Robin Drake** (2:40)
But he's still in jail for it. So he's still a prisoner. Yeah, right.

**Bob Motta** (2:44)
So do I think that there's a potential Sixth Amendment type issue? Maybe.

**Tony Brueski** (2:51)
Yeah, I mean, I guess. I mean, the thing is with it. It's like, does it hurt anything if he plays a little mime sweeper on the side to prevent a chance of another appeal or a successful another successful appeal? You see, do you want to make sure everything is just reduce the odds of this? We don't want to talk about Alec Murdaugh for the next 20 years. Another thing that was brought up, Harpootlian brought up the first responder transcripts. This is kind of interesting. To the court, he told the judge other people were at Moselle that night whose accounts don't match.
Okay, I mean, it's lawyer speak, you know, it sounds big, it sounds exciting, it sounds interesting, maybe there's something to it. How far can the defense go with that without naming an alternative suspect if they're going to go down that road? How specific do they need to get? Do they need to get all the way like Karen Reed style where they're saying there are these people in the house that did these things, but we're not going to really get into super great detail other than they might have had something. Can it be to that vague of level? How specific does the defense need to go in the Murdaugh case? How far can they go without getting more specific?

**Bob Motta** (4:04)
If you can connect the person to the crime, and usually if you can place a person within the proximity, you're cooking with gas at that point. It's a different thing. Like with the Reed thing, that wasn't just some random people. That was people where this guy was supposed to be heading, and there was supposed to be a guy. They found him on the lawn.
In that case, Kanoni, she allowed the third-party culprit to come in through Bowdoin, which is in the Massachusetts case, talking about the lack of an investigation or the poor investigation, ultimately. But here, you kind of have some of those same problems with SLED's investigation.