Prosecutors and defense attorneys for Alex Murdaugh have been arguing over whether he can wear street clothes when he appears in court in Lexington County on Monday for the first public hearing since his double-murder conviction was overturned.
The S.C. Supreme Court on May 13 overturned Murdaugh’s 2023 convictions for murder in the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at their family estate in rural Colleton County. Prosecution and defense attorneys are now in the early stages of preparing for a retrial.
Murdaugh should be allowed to appear at Monday’s pretrial hearing unshackled and in civilian clothing because the news media’s cameras would otherwise broadcast prejudicial images of him in prison garb to potential jurors, his lawyers argued in a motion to Judge Debra McCaslin…