Murdaugh Defense Asks Judge to Dismiss Murder Indictments, Alleging Investigator Misled Grand Jury

Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh asked a judge on Friday to throw out the original murder indictments against him, alleging that State Law Enforcement Division agent David Owen lied to the grand jury. The request came at a pretrial hearing in Lexington County, South Carolina, before Judge Debra McCaslin. Defense attorney Jim Griffin said Owen falsely told grand jurors that Paul Murdaugh's blood spatter was found on the white t-shirt Murdaugh wore the night of the 2021 killings, and that DNA from Murdaugh, Paul and Maggie was found near the spatter. The grand jury indicted Murdaugh in July 2022. Murdaugh, 58, faces a retrial in April after the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned his convictions and life sentence, ruling that a court clerk improperly influenced jurors at his 2023 trial. Prosecutors can seek new indictments as soon as next month, and the defense said it will not try to stop them. Owen retired in 2024, has acknowledged mistakes, and denies intentionally misleading the grand jury.

CBS News, on the left, frames the motion as a longshot that may not delay the April retrial. It centers on Owen's record: a different murder case he worked was thrown out last year over an undisclosed suicide threat, and he retired after being named State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. It gives little detail on the blood-spatter claim. The Daily Mail, on the right, leads with the blood-spatter allegation and calls the motion a "Hail Mary" in its headline, which also uses "lies" and "disgraced" for the defendant. It describes Murdaugh's dark suit and rocking in his chair, cites Griffin's claims about the t-shirt and DNA, notes that FITSNews reported the allegation in 2022, and points to SLED's own lab testing of the shirt. Both agree on the basic claim, the judge, the retrial timing and Murdaugh's age. NewsNation, an alternative outlet, reports only the misled-grand-jury allegation about blood splatter.