Alex Murdaugh's Trial Has A NEW Home

Tony Brueski (0:00)

This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski.

Tony Brueski (0:11)

Alex Murdaugh's trial is moving. Moving on up, moving on. Remember that song? Moving on up, I don't remember the lyrics. Anyway, moving to a new place. And we're back in January 23, 900 people in Colleton County, got a jury summons back then. The Alec Murdaugh double murder trial. We're all watching it. We're covering it right here. They filled out questionnaires about what they'd heard, what they'd seen, who they talked to.

123 qualified out of 980 made the final strike sheet. When the judge asked the final panel whether anyone had heard of the case, it appeared that every single person stood up. Fewer than one in seven could sit in a chair and say they hadn't already decided. The prospective jurors included people related to the Murdaugh family, people represented by the family's former law firm, and people who watched every minute of coverage. That was three and a half years ago. That was before the Supreme Court threw out the conviction, Becky Hill pleaded guilty to obstruction, to perjury, and two counts of misconduct in office. Before the next round of documentaries and podcasts and streaming specials made this case even bigger. All of that happened before the blow up. Judge Debra McCaslin looked at that number and called it a floor, not a ceiling. Then she sent this trial 86 miles away to a town neither side asked for. On September 8th of 2026, McCaslin filed an eight-page order, moving the retrial to SumterCounty. The defense wanted Charleston. The prosecution fought that. McCaslin gave them a place nobody wanted. Nobody was fighting over for, so nobody can be happy. The retrial starts April 5th of 27 Plan your vacations. By then it will have been nearly six years since Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were shot to death at the family's Moselle property. Six years of wall-to-wall coverage, six years of opinions, hardening. The question here isn't guilt or innocence, whether 12 people anywhere in SouthCarolina can hear the name and not already have a verdict in their pocket. Most people think this is a fame problem. It's not. Famous defendants get their fair trials every day. This is a power problem. Three generations of the Murdaugh family held the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office from 1920 to 2006, 86 years. The solicitor in SouthCarolina is the prosecutor, the person who decides who gets charged, who gets a plea, and who goes home. Think about what that means if you live in one of those five counties.

Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, Jasper, Colleton County has about 39,000 residents. In a community that small, everybody is connected to the legal system somehow. If you get arrested, a Murdaugh decided your future. If your family needed justice after a wrongful death, you walked into a Murdaugh's law firm. If your neighbor went to prison, a Murdaugh put him there. If your neighbor walked, a Murdaugh let him go. People called the region Murdaugh country. The family's firm, Peter's Murdaugh Parker, L. Troth and Dietrich, was one of the most powerful practices in the Lowcountry.

It wasn't a famous family. This was the family that ran your life, that ran your parents' lives, your grandparents' for nearly a century. McCaslin's order lays it out. Some residents may associate the name with public service. Others may associate it with privilege, influence or resentment.

Either direction disqualifies a juror. You can't be neutral about a name that shaped your family's experience with the law for three generations. You can't voir dire that out of a person. The Mallory Beach wrongful death case, a civil case tangled up in the Murdaugh saga, was also moved out of the 14th Circuit for the same contamination. The dynasty poisoned every courtroom in five counties. Then there's the courthouse. Harpudolin called the Colleton County Courthouse the scene of the crime. And he wasn't talking about the murders, obviously. He was talking about good old Becky Hill. Hill was the elected clerk of court during the 23 trial. She served as the jury's caretaker, managing their logistics, their meals, their movement through the building, their minds.

The Supreme Court found she used that position to insert herself into the deliberation. She led you to tell jurors not to be fooled by the defense. She led you to tell them to watch Murdaugh closely when he testified. She then co-authored a book about the case while she still held the office and promoted it on the taxpayers' dime. It got pulled from publication because of plagiarism. Hill resigned from her position in March of 24 while the state was investigating her conduct. The state's Ethics Commission filed 76 counts of ethics violations against her. She pled guilty in December 25 to obstruction of justice, perjury and two counts of misconduct in office, three years of probation and 100 hours of community service. The Supreme Court called her conduct a breathtaking and disgraceful effort to undermine the jury process unprecedented in South Carolina. She never spent a day behind bars for any of it. One person's poor decisions, all in line to benefit herself, is why we're back here talking about Alec F-ing Murdaugh today.