South Carolina choose sentences former lawyer to 2 consecutive life sentences for homicide of spouse and son.

A disgraced former lawyer who was convicted of killing his spouse and son after a six-week trial that riveted the USA has been sentenced to 2 consecutive life sentences.

All through the trial, Alex Murdaugh had mentioned he was not responsible within the June 7, 2021, capturing deaths on the household’s sprawling residential and farming compound within the US state of South Carolina.

Choose Clifton Newton on Friday advised Murdaugh’s opioid dependancy could have made him “a monster” and that “the particular person standing earlier than me was not the one who dedicated the crime, although it’s the identical particular person.”

Earlier than handing down the sentence, Newton mentioned the murders certified for the loss of life penalty, however he didn’t “query in any respect” the prosecutors’ choice to not pursue that choice.

Murdaugh maintained his innocence earlier than sentencing.

“I respect this courtroom, however I’m harmless, and I’d by no means below any circumstances damage my spouse, Maggie, and I’d by no means below any circumstances damage my son Paw-Paw,” Murdaugh mentioned, utilizing a nickname he used for his son Paul.

Murdaugh is a part of a authorized dynasty. He was sentenced in the identical courtroom on the circuit the place his father, grandfather and great-grandfather tried circumstances as elected prosecutors for greater than 80 years. His grandfather’s portrait hung at the back of the room till the choose ordered it taken down for the trial.

As a substitute of the costume shirt and sport coat he wore by way of the six-week trial, Murdaugh, who made hundreds of thousands suing large corporations on behalf of individuals injured in accidents, arrived at courtroom in a jail jumpsuit the day after he was convicted of two counts of homicide.

The Colleton County jury deliberated for lower than three hours earlier than discovering Murdaugh responsible of killing his 22-year-old son with a shotgun and his 52-year-old spouse with a rifle.

Juror Craig Moyer instructed US broadcaster ABC Information that when deliberations started, the jury instantly took a ballot that got here again with 9 responsible votes. It didn’t take lengthy to steer the opposite three jurors to convict Murdaugh.

The juror agreed with prosecutors that the important thing piece of proof was a video locked on his son’s cellphone for a yr – video shot minutes earlier than the killings on the similar kennels close to the place the our bodies can be discovered.

The voices of all three Murdaughs could be heard on the video though Alex Murdaugh had insisted for 20 months that he hadn’t been on the kennels that night time. When he took the stand in his personal defence, the very first thing he did was admit he had lied to investigators about being on the kennels, saying he was paranoid of legislation enforcement as a result of he was an opioid addict with tablets in his pocket the night time of the killings.

“ liar. However not ok,” Moyer mentioned.

Prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill the mom and son or different direct proof like confessions or blood spatter. However they’d a mountain of circumstantial proof, together with the video placing Alex Murdaugh on the scene of the killings 5 minutes earlier than his spouse and son stopped utilizing their cellphones perpetually.

“As appeals are in all probability anticipated, I’d not anticipate a confession of any type,” Newton mentioned on Friday.