Lawsuit dismissed against SLED, accused of hiding public information in Murdaugh murders
READ MORE
Murdaugh murders in Colleton County
Two members of a powerhouse legal family were shot and killed June 7 in Colleton County, SC. Read more of our coverage.
Expand All
A lawsuit brought by an S.C. newspaper accusing police agencies of shielding information from the public in the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh was dismissed on Thursday.
The Charleston Post and Courier filed the lawsuit more than a week after the June 7 killings, when the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office was releasing only a two-line incident report on what happened. The S.C. Law Enforcement Division, leading the investigation, denied public records requests for the 911 call audio.
The lawsuit said the Sheriff’s Office and SLED were breaking S.C. Freedom of Information law by withholding that information.
Four days after SLED was sued, the agency released heavily redacted versions of supplement reports to the public. They were written by Colleton County deputies on the scene of the Murdaughs’ rural home where Paul, 22, and his mother, Maggie, 52, were found shot to death.
A month after that, SLED released the 911 call Alex Murdaugh made, saying he had arrived home to find them shot.
Edward Fenno, of Fenno Law Firm LLC, represented the Post and Courier. He said the newspaper voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit, in agreement with the agencies, because they got what they came for.
“The fact that we filed the lawsuit this time will hopefully make law enforcement act differently next time when they want to give a two-liner,” Fenno said, referring to Colleton County’s incident report.
What they didn’t get, however, was a ruling from a circuit judge finding that SLED and the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office broke Freedom of Information law by initially declining the requests for information.
S.C. FOIA law requires police agencies to provide reports that “disclose the nature, substance, and/or location of any crime or alleged crime.”
They can get around that by releasing only the bare bones description of the crime in an incident report. Police are also protected by exemptions to FOIA law, which permits information to be blocked if it will impact a criminal investigation or future prosecution.
In court filings, SLED defended its actions as necessary for a thorough, untainted investigation.
“The release of certain information will inevitably reveal certain theories and leads on cases that are still in the process of being developed. ... It is imperative that the media and general public not rush to judgment while speculating on this matter in a way that impedes the law enforcement’s ability to seek justice,” the agency said in court documents.
Still, SLED has provided little information on the murder case.
More than four months after the deaths, SLED has held no press conferences, identified no suspects or motives publicly.
This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 10:57 AM.
