Editor’s Note: The HBO docuseries “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” chronicles the family’s influence in South Carolina. It airs on CNN Sunday, February 19, at 8 p.m. ET.
CNN
—
The judge in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh on Wednesday ruled against allowing testimony about the roadside shooting in September 2021 in which Murdaugh claimed he asked another man to shoot him so his surviving son could obtain millions in life insurance.
The state contends Murdaugh – who has pleaded not guilty to killing his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and grown son, Paul Murdaugh – committed the murders in June 2021 to distract from his alleged financial crimes and to stave off a “day of reckoning.”
Prosecutor Creighton Waters argued the roadside shooting showed a “consciousness of guilt,” pointing to the defendant’s initial statements to law enforcement he had been targeted by an unknown assailant after Murdaugh pulled over to address a flat tire. This led people to believe, Waters said, that Maggie and Paul’s killers had come back to target Alex and so he could not be responsible for their deaths.
Waters also argued the roadside shooting illustrated a “symmetry” with the murders of Maggie and Paul: Both shootings occurred soon after members of Murdaugh’s former law firm confronted him about stealing from the firm and its clients.
Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian opposed the inclusion of the testimony, saying it showed guilty knowledge not of Maggie and Paul’s killings but of the financial crimes, for which Murdaugh, now disbarred, faces 99 charges separate from the murder case.
Judge Clifton Newman ultimately ruled that, while he had allowed evidence of Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes on the basis of showing motive, the roadside shooting went beyond that. It would be a “bridge too far,” Newman said, and “does not meet the logical relevancy test.”
Murdaugh later told authorities he conspired with a former client to kill him as part of an insurance fraud scheme, court documents show, purportedly so his son Buster could collect the payout. Murdaugh believed, Harpootlian would tell NBC’s “Today Show,” that his life insurance policy had a suicide exclusion.
Murdaugh was later charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report, according to a law enforcement statement. The shooter, Curtis Edward Smith, was charged with assisted suicide; conspiracy to commit insurance fraud; pointing and presenting a firearm; and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, according to authorities.
Murdaugh allegedly conspired with Curtis Edward Smith in the shooting on September 4, per the affidavit supporting charges against Smith, providing him with the firearm and instructing Smith to shoot him in the head.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division later described the injury as a “superficial gunshot wound to the head.”
