Justice is going to have to be blind to the Murdaugh spin machine and power plays

On the way home from my Uncle Jack’s funeral many years ago, I was charged with going 55 mph in a 35-mph zone on the outskirts of Allendale.

These outskirts were so far out that the only thing you could hear was cattle lowing. And, as it turned out, so far out that the speed limit was actually 55.

I was reminded of my day in court while watching Alex Murdaugh face a judge Thursday on much more serious charges in a small courtroom in Varnville, right up the road.

As I waited my turn in the Allendale Municipal Court, the judge convicted a man of loitering.

Loitering? In this poor corner of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where the Murdaugh family was the law for 86 years with three generations of lead prosecutors, there’s not much else to do but loiter. They should be nervous about the ones who are not loitering, I thought.

The judge was extremely curious about how this loitering gentleman was going to pay his debt to society. As in, show me the money.

He answered that he had a part-time job working for so-and-so, who turned out to be an undertaker.

The judge asked him what work he did. He said he got calls sometimes to dig graves.

The judge leaned forward, digging deeper herself.

“Are you expectin’ somebody to DIE?”

Alex Murdaugh and his high-powered lawyers didn’t face any such curiosity in his hearing Thursday in Hampton County, home of the Murdaughs.

Murdaugh, a 53-year-old attorney and former volunteer prosecutor in the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office once run by his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, gave up his passport and was released on a $20,000 personal recognizance bond. He did not have to pay anything out of pocket to get out of jail on charges that he had plotted unsuccessfully to stage his own murder.

The man who once was president of the S.C. Trial Lawyers Association faces charges of insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and falsifying a police report.

VICTIMHOOD

Murdaugh’s lawyers are spinning this case almost as if it were an honorable act of valor.

They claim Murdaugh set up the bizarre roadside shooting so his surviving son could collect $10 million in life insurance.

According to his lawyers, Murdaugh suffered a serious gunshot wound to the head in this endeavor.

But the State Law Enforcement Division — which is now investigating five cases surrounding Murdaugh, including the June 7 murders of his wife and younger son — said from the outset that the failed roadside suicide/murder resulted in a “superficial” wound.

In the courtroom, there was no visible sign of Murdaugh having as much as a mosquito bite on his head, much less signs of the entry and exit of a bullet, as his lawyers claim.

Murdaugh’s lawyers, led by state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, are painting their client as a victim.

They blame Murdaugh’s sudden fall from grace on his alleged addiction to opioid pain-killers.

Harpootlian, whose role as a state senator renders him a giant looming over any courtroom he enters in this state, repeatedly refers to Murdaugh’s alleged “20-year” addiction to opioids.

That should have interested the magistrate judge because Murdaugh is said to be in an out-of-state residential drug rehabilitation center and thus not able to bide any time in the Hampton County Detention Center. They said he was released for the day for his booking and bond hearing.

Murdaugh’s alleged 20-year addiction was perhaps taken up in a letter from someone at the rehab center that Harpootlian showed but did not read, and no questions were asked.

So Murdaugh was released back to the rehab center, which the judge ruled he cannot leave without permission.

And between the high-powered lawyers and a Columbia firm that has been working to influence public opinion on the Murdaugh saga, this narrative of victimhood marches on.

It needs to be challenged at every turn.

WHO IS ON TRIAL

Amid bursts of rain, the media swarmed like locusts around the small courtroom on Varnville’s Cemetery Road Thursday.

This hearing was the biggest thing to hit Varnville since 1993, when Varnville was transformed into fictitious Greenbow, Alabama, and little Forrest Gump and his mother were filmed around town for the blockbuster movie.

To show how deep we are in the weeds of good-old-boy justice, it has to be seen as progress that Alex Murdaugh, unlike his late son Paul, actually stepped into the jail when charged, had his mugshot taken in a jail jumpsuit, and appeared in court in a jail jumpsuit, leg irons and handcuffs.

That’s the treatment you and I and the part-time gravediggers of the world would get, but that Paul Murdaugh avoided in his 2019 bond hearing on three felony charges following a boat crash that resulted in the death of a 19-year-old Hampton County woman.

Since then, Paul Murdaugh, 22, and his mother, Maggie, 52, have been shot to death; Alex Murdaugh has been accused on pilfering perhaps millions of dollars from his family law firm and forced to resign by the Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick firm; the S.C. Supreme Court has suspended him from practicing law; the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s office has formally severed its relationship with him; SLED has opened an investigation into the mysterious 2018 death of a housekeeper in the Alex Murdaugh home; and a 2015 death in Hampton County that locals, but not the police, linked to the Murdaughs also is now being investigated by SLED.

And then on Sept. 4 came the botched killing of Alex Murdaugh, in which he apparently has on speed dial someone willing to kill upon request.

Murdaugh supposedly came clean on it after his dash to a rehab center, refuting the cockamamie story he and his lawyers first told, and pointing a finger at his alleged accomplice.

It’s hard to stay focused in a saga that drips like moss with plots and subplots ripped from the pages of Shakespeare and romance novels.

But the public needs to keep its eye on the ball. What is on trial here is the criminal justice system.

SLED is on trial, as well, at the office of S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Will they investigate and prosecute any Murdaugh enablers and cohorts? Will they show enough curiosity to connect some dots?

Will they treat the privileged who can be represented by a state senator the same as they would a part-time gravedigger?

Justice can sort it all out, as long as it is not blinded by the spin machine.

David Lauderdale may be contacted at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published September 18, 2021 at 8:00 AM.