South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday, a day after he was convicted of murderer in the shooting deaths of his wife and son.
Judge Clifton Newman asked Murdaugh if he had anything he wanted to say before sentencing him to two consecutive life terms, and the one-prominent lawyer maintained his innocence.
“As I tell you again, I respect this court. But I am innocent. I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife Maggie and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son Paul Paul,” Murdaugh responded.
Newman replied, “And it might not have been you. It might have been the monster you become when you take 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 opioid pills. Maybe you become another person. I have seen that before. The person standing before me was not the person who committed the crime, though it is the same individual."
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Before sentencing Murdaugh, Newman directly addressed the disgraced attorney in a lengthy speech.
"As a member of the legal community and well-known member of the legal community, you’ve practiced law before me and we’ve seen each other in various occasions throughout the years," Newman said to Murdaugh. “And it was especially heartbreaking for me to see you go in the media from being a grieving father who lost the wife and son to being the person indicted and convicted of killing them."
The judge called the evidence against Murdaugh "overwhelming" and said he believes Murdaugh's slain wife and son visit him at nighttime before he goes to sleep, and "they will continue to do so and will reflect on the last time they looked you in the eyes.”
Alex Murdaugh Trial Coverage:
Prosecutor Creighton Waters said none of the victims of the crime — members of Murdaugh’s family and the parents and relatives of his wife — wished to speak on behalf of the prosecution before sentencing.
“The depravity, the callousness, the selfishness of these crimes are stunning. The lack of remorse and the effortless way in which he is, including here, sitting right over there in this witness stand — your honor, a man like that, a man like this man, should never be allowed to be among free, law abiding citizens,” Waters said.
Prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty in this case, and Newman handed down the harshest possible sentence he could — consecutive life sentences without parole.
“Over the past century, your family — including you — have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom, and many have received the death penalty, probably for lesser conduct,” the judge said.
As Murdaugh stood before the judge to learn his fate, he was in the same courtroom on the circuit where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather tried cases as the elected prosecutor for more than 80 years. His grandfather’s portrait hung in the back of the room until the judge ordered it taken down for the trial.
Instead of the dress shirt and sport coat he wore through the six-week trial, the attorney who made millions suing big companies on behalf of people injured in wrecks arrived at court in a jail jumpsuit the day after he was convicted of two counts of murder.
The Colleton County jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of killing his 22-year-old son Paul with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife Maggie with a rifle on June 7, 2021.
Juror Craig Moyer told ABC News that when deliberations began, the jury immediately took a poll and there were nine guilty votes. It didn't take long to convince the other three.
The juror agreed with prosecutors that the key piece of evidence was a video locked on his son’s cellphone for a year — video shot minutes before the killings at the same kennels near where the bodies would be found.
The voices of all three Murdaughs can be heard on the video, though Alex Murdaugh had insisted for 20 months that he hadn't been at the kennels that night. When he took the stand in his own defense, the first thing he did was admit he had lied to investigators about being at the kennels, saying he was paranoid of law enforcement because he was an opioid addict with pills in his pocket the night of the killings.
“A good liar. But not good enough,” Moyer said.
Judge Newman noted Friday that Murdaugh had more than enough time to confess about lying to investigators regarding his whereabouts on the night of the murders, noting that as late as November 2022 his attorneys filed an alibi claim that he had not been to kennels until finding their bodies.
"You have engaged in duplicitous conduct here in the courtroom, here on the witness stand, and as established by the testimony, throughout the time leading from the time of the indictment and prior to the time of the indictment to this point in time."
Prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill the Murdaughs or other direct evidence like confessions or blood spatter. But they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, including the video putting Murdaugh at the scene of the killings five minutes before his wife and son stopped using their cellphones forever.
Through more than 75 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence, jurors heard about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh’s failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, a fatal boat crash in which his son was implicated, the housekeeper who died in a fall in the Murdaugh home and the grisly scene of the killings.
The now-disbarred attorney admitted stealing millions of dollars from the family firm and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit. Before he was charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion.
The Murdaughs dominated the legal scene in neighboring Hampton County for a century. Another brother remains in the large law firm the family founded a century ago.
When he took the stand last week, Murdaugh appeared to cry as he denied again and again that he killed his wife. But juror Moyer said he saw through yet another lie.
“He never cried. All he did was blow snot," Moyer said. "No tears. I saw his eyes. I was this close to him.”
Defense attorneys said they will appeal, based largely on the judge allowing the evidence of crimes that Murdaugh has not been convicted of, which they say smeared his reputation.
“They had cast Alex as a despicable human being. And that was the reason they offered it,” Griffin said.
After sentencing, Murdaugh returned to the Colleton County jail to gather his possessions and will be taken to an evaluation center in Columbia for medical, mental health and education testing. In a month or so, he will move to a maximum security state prison like all new inmates serving life sentences.
Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina.
