Alex Murdaugh's Lawyers Planned To Do WHAT to Becky Hill?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Alex Murdaugh's lawyer sued Becky Hill for $600,000. Murdaugh says that money came out of his retirement account to pay for his first murder trial. The dollar figure made the headline when they filed it in May of 2026, five days after his conviction was thrown out. And I mean, think about it for a second. You take all the shittiness of Alex Murdaugh out of the conversation. You just spent $600,000 on attorneys for a trial that still got you locked up. And then the court goes and says, we're actually going to throw that whole thing out. We're going to do this all over again.
Well, what about that $600 I just spent on a trial that went horribly sideways because it was beyond my control because one of your officials poisoned the pond?
I got some damages over here that I need to be made whole on again because I got to fund more attorneys for this second round.
Now for Alex Murdaugh, it's a blessing that he's getting a new trial. And that's for Alex Murdaugh to feel that way. But the reality is it's not Alex Murdaugh, it's somebody else in that sort of situation. And the institution poisons the well of which you're forced to drink out of.
And they realize, oh, shit, one of our people poisoned this well.
We got to go back and do this all over again.
Is it the responsibility of the person who was forced to drink out of the well to pay again to go back to that same well and drink out of it? I mean, it's... I actually... I kind of understand this lawsuit here. Now, the law may not agree with how fundamental that works.
But I think it's kind of got a point there. The suit carried two tools that mattered more than the money. Subpoena power. Subpoena power. It was more about that than it was the actual money. But I do think he has a point at the money. And I wouldn't mind seeing Becky Hill being forced to cough up $600,000.
But subpoena power was really the big thing here. Subpoena power means the defense could legally force people to hand over emails, text messages and phone records. Deposition authority also there means they could sit a person in a chair under oath and question them for hours. Lying in that chair is a new crime. That's what that lawsuit was all about. Jim Griffin, one of Murdaugh's lawyers, even said the purpose out loud at the press conference. The suit existed, in his words, to investigate exactly what she did. Then he asked the question on the record, did she act alone?
That's part of the phishing expedition that they were out for. And they can only really get it by suing Becky Hill, by sitting others down in depositions to get them on the record on the questions they asked. And then, when that trial comes along, totally different trial, these are two totally different lawsuits, then they could take that information. And if somebody gives a slightly different answer that they view as being slightly contradictory or off, that's impeaching them on the stand. And see, they told us that, there, you're saying this here now. How can we trust anything you're saying? And thus, you have reasonable doubt. That is kind of, in a nutshell, what the attorneys for Alex Murdaugh were trying to do by pulling the lever of the $600,000 lawsuit against Becky Hill. And we're going to get into all of this, how this works, because in August 5th of 26th, Federal District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston dismissed the case in five pages. The investigation died with it eight months before the jury selection. So that lever they were going to pull to try and help the defense of Alex Murdaugh in trial number two. Oh, it just got put back into place. The retrial starts April 5th of 2027 in Lexington County. Judge Debra McCaslin has the case and she has told both sides she intends to keep that date. The state is retrying the same four counts, two of murder and two of weapons possession. The attorney general has said the death penalty is on the table this round. Murdaugh's lawyers have ruled out any sort of plea deal. In Harpudolin's words at the June status conference, Off the table, we want a trial.
The first trial of course was held at the courthouse in Waterborough and ended in March of 23 with a conviction. Murdaugh arrived at the June hearing for the retrial in an orange jumpsuit and chains. Becky Hill was the Colleton County clerk who managed the jury at the first trial. Jurors testified she told them to watch Murdaugh's actions and warned them not to be fooled by his lawyers. Bunger called Juror Z and the record testified those comments made her believe he was guilty before deliberations even began. Hill was arrested in May of 25 and pled guilty that December to obstruction, perjury, misconduct and office. Her sentence was three years of probation and through her lawyers Hill denied ever tampering with the jury even as she admitted to other charges. The jury contact was one piece of her record. Hill admitted she showed sealed crime scene photographs to journalists and then lied about under oath. She admitted she skimmed bonus money from public accounts. She's a real on the up and up type folks. She also published a book about the trial while the appeal was still pending using the biggest case of her career as material. She ended up resigning from the clerk's office in March of 24 and has held no public position since. In May of 26, the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out Murdaugh's conviction by a 5-0 vote. The justices wrote that Hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice. The ruling erased the murder convictions and the weapons counts along with them. Attorney General Alan Wilson answered the ruling the same day. His office said they would aggressively seek to retry Murdaugh as soon as possible. Once contact like Hill's with the jury was shown, the state had to prove it caused no harm and they couldn't. That ruling settled the tampering for good. The court already gave Murdaugh everything Hill's conduct could give him, which is a new trial, proving that what she did all over again is really worth nothing in front of the next jury. One piece of the first trial does stay unresolved. During deliberations, a juror was removed from the panel over an anonymous email. Three years later, the sender has never been identified. So the lawsuit's value sat in what its investigation could produce for April of 27 Take Griffin at his word. There were four things on his list. The tools only existed inside the lawsuit because of how criminal cases work. A criminal defendant gets discovery from the state, meaning the prosecution turns over its file, Hill's personal emails, texts, phone records were never in that original file. His lawyers also can't force a private citizen to answer their questions. So suing her changed the rules because a civil defendant can be subpoenaed and opposed. The first thing on this list was leads that point at someone other than Alec. That was the whole goal of this. The defense's job at a retrial is reasonable doubt and it's opening. It's already on file. Sled found unknown male DNA under Maggie's fingernails and never pursued it. The defense wants that DNA run through genetic genealogy, which means tracing it through family tree databases towards a name. Sled never took it that far and the murder weapons have never been found. Civil discovery could reach people and records the murder case can't touch. Any name or dropped lead surfacing in those depositions becomes something the defense can chase or subpoena into the criminal case. One was helping the other in the minds of Alex Murdaugh's attorney. A someone else story needs facts behind it and the suit was built to go find them. Yeah, like OJ on a golf course. The second thing was the answer to Griffin's question. Hill's records plus depositions of the people around her would either end the story at one clerk or show that there was some sort of coordination. More people were, I guess, egging Becky along allegedly to do this. And if there was somebody doing that, who and why? What connection did they have to Murdaugh? If anyone connected to the state's side touched that jury, legal analysts have noted that that supports a motion to dismiss the charges for government misconduct. In plain English, that's the argument that the state doesn't get a second try at. The case is rigged by its own people. Hill herself has never answered questions under oath in the open. Her plea deal ended her criminal case without a trial, so there was no witness stand and no cross examination. The state's investigators questioned her behind closed doors and closed the file. Hill's son, remember him? Colleton County's Technology Department person. He was running that until 2023, when he was charged with using his position to secretly record a phone call between county employees. Whether anything in that building connected to the jury was a question that only depositions could ask. The coordination idea stays the defense's theory. Without a record behind it, the anonymous email sat on the same target list. In tracing, the sender either closes a loose end or opens a much bigger one. The third thing was sworn statements to carry into the retrial deposition. It works like this. A witness sits across from the other side's lawyers and swears to tell the truth. Then, they question her for hours. On the record, every answer gets transcribed and kept, and they could get more people than her. They could reach sled agents, courthouse staff, the people who investigated Hill herself. All of them, on the record, before the retrial starts, people who might go on the record in the Alex Murdaugh trial.