Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh are expected in court Friday to ask a judge to throw out the original murder indictments for killing his wife and son. Now they’re saying the chief investigator in the case lied to the grand jury.
\n\nMurdaugh is facing a retrial on the murder charges after the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out his convictions and life sentence, ruling that a court clerk improperly influenced jurors against him during his 2023 trial.
\n\nEven if the longshot request to dismiss the indictments is granted by Judge Debra McCaslin at Friday’s pretrial hearing, it may not stop or even postpone an April retrial for the disgraced lawyer. Prosecutors can seek another set of grand jury indictments as soon as next month, and defense attorneys said they won’t stop them.
\n\nBut a ruling for Murdaugh would be another rebuke of the chief investigator, State Law Enforcement Division agent David Owen.
\n\nA judge last year threw out a different murder case Owen was involved in because the dead woman’s mother told the agent about a suicide threat her daughter made days before she died that Owen never relayed to prosecutors or defense attorneys.
\n\nOwen abruptly retired in 2024, not long…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/