Alex Murdaugh was taken into custody immediately after the jury found him guilty in the murder trial for his wife Maggie and son Paul. The lawyer, 54, was handcuffed and taken out of the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina on Thursday, March 2. The jury had found him guilty after a very short deliberation, and he will be sentenced on Friday, March 3.
The attorney, who had also been facing a number of legal troubles for his financial issues, had been accused of murdering his wife, 52, and younger son, 22. He pleaded not guilty to the charges. Both he and his surviving son Buster, 26, took the stand as part of his defense. Buster opened up about how “heartbroken” his father was about the murders, describing the call he received after Alex found Maggie and Paul’s bodies. “He sounded odd, and then he told me that my mom and my brother had been shot,” Buster said on the stand. “He was destroyed.”
When Alex took the stand, he still swore that he did not kill Maggie and Paul. He claimed that he was “nowhere near” either of them the night that they got shot, per CNN. He also maintained his innocence when speaking about the prosecution’s claims. “I never manufactured any alibi in any way shape or form because I did not, and would not, hurt my wife and my child,” he said. Although, he did admit to lying about some aspects of his initial claims, including his whereabouts on the night his wife and son were murdered.
During closing arguments, the prosecution pointed out once again the mounting legal troubles that Alex was facing, claiming that they lead to the murders. “The evidence that you’ve heard shows that the defendant became so addicted and so dependent on the velocity of money that the millions of dollars in legal fees that he was receiving was not enough and so he started to steal,” Creighton Waters said. “The pressures on this man were unbearable and they were reaching a crescendo the day his wife and son were murdered by him.”
After being taken into custody, Alex will return to court on Friday to receive sentencing. He faces a minimum of a 30-year sentence. The prosecution has made it clear that they will be seeking a life sentence without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty, per The New York Times.