South Carolina Supreme Court overturns Murdaugh murder convictions

3 min readUpdated May 13, 2026

The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the murder convictions of Alex Murdaugh this week in a unanimous ruling, finding that the Colleton County clerk of court tampered with the jury during his 2023 trial and denied him the right to a fair proceeding.

Writing that Hill had "placed her fingers on the scales of justice," the court determined that her communications with jurors prior to and during Murdaugh's time on the witness stand cost him the right to a fair proceeding, according to The New York Times. As a result, the pair of life sentences imposed following his convictions in the killings of his wife, Margaret Murdaugh, 52, and son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, at the family's South Carolina property in June 2021, were set aside.

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According to the Los Angeles Times, the justices attributed Hill's conduct to what they called the "siren call of celebrity" and her calculation that a guilty verdict would boost sales of a book she intended to publish about the case. The book never made it to market; it was withdrawn after portions were found to have been plagiarized. In December 2025, Hill entered guilty pleas to perjury and obstruction of justice arising from her actions during the trial and received a sentence of three years' probation, according to CNN.

According to CBS News, Murdaugh, 57, faces no immediate prospect of freedom: guilty pleas to financial crimes covering the theft of millions from clients and his own firm have him locked into overlapping state and federal prison terms of 27 and 40 years, respectively.

State Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that prosecutors would pursue a new murder trial. "While we respectfully disagree with the Court's decision, my Office will aggressively seek to retry Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul as soon as possible," Wilson said, according to CBS News.

Looking ahead to a possible retrial, all five justices agreed on an additional point: that the original judge had permitted the prosecution to venture far beyond what was warranted in its presentation of Murdaugh's financial crimes, according to the court's opinion. The justices acknowledged that some evidence of the financial crimes could legitimately go before a jury to support a motive argument, but pointed to a specific example of overreach: testimony revealing that one theft victim's brother was "a vulnerable adult" contributed nothing to establishing why Murdaugh might have killed his family while exposing him to the kind of sympathy-driven prejudice that Rule 403 is designed to prevent.

Defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin welcomed the outcome. "Alex has said from day one that he did not kill his wife and son," they said, according to The New York Times. "We look forward to a new trial conducted consistent with the Constitution."

Alex Murdaugh Gets New Trial After Supreme Court Voids Murder Convictions

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