Prosecutors deny falsifying evidence in original Murdaugh murder indictments

John Monk, The State on Nov 6, 2026

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — Prosecutors in the Alex Murdaugh case are denying they used flawed evidence to convince the county grand jury that indicted him on double murder charges in 2022.

“The State did not present false or fabricated evidence to the Colleton County grand jury,” prosecutors for the S.C. Attorney General’s office wrote in a court filing made late Friday afternoon in the Colleton County clerk of court’s office.

The prosecution’s 22-page filing was in response to a motion made on Oct. 30 by Murdaugh’s defense attorneys asking state Judge Debra McCaslin to throw out the original 2022 indictments charging Murdaugh with murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul.

In their defense motion, Murdaugh’s lawyers alleged that to secure the 2022 murder indictments, a State Law Enforcement Division agent falsely told the Colleton County grand jury that blood spatter was found on the clothes Murdaugh wore on the night of June 7, 2021, the night his wife and son were found shot to death on the 1,700-acre family estate in a rural section of the county.

In their motion, defense attorneys said that prosecutors could still go before a new Colleton County grand jury in December, when it is scheduled to meet again, and re-indict Murdaugh with additional or other evidence.

New indictments for murder would allow prosecutors to move forward and still go to trial on the new indictments on April 5, defense lawyers wrote.

April 5 is the date that Judge McCaslin has set for Murdaugh’s retrial on the murder charges. The retrial will be in Sumter.

Murdaugh was initially found guilty of two counts of murder in March 2023 by a Colleton County jury after a six-week trial. But in May, the S.C. Supreme Court overturned the verdicts after finding Murdaugh was denied his right to a fair trial because of jury tampering by the county’s former clerk of court.

The highest court appointed McCaslin to preside at the retrial.

“The defense is simply incorrect in its assertions that a SLED agent presented false blood spatter evidence — much less ‘fabricated’ evidence — to the Colleton County grand jury that indicted defendant Alex Murdaugh for the murders of his wife and child.” prosecutors said in their Friday filing.

“These are not new issues, and all this was litigated prior and during the previous trial,” prosecutors wrote.

In any event, evidence about blood spatter was only “but one part” of all the evidence the SLED agent presented to the grand jury in 2022, prosecutors wrote.