In almost any criminal trial, some key decisions are determined before a potential jury pool is even summoned, identifying the playing field and establishing the rules of legal engagement. That is certainly most true in the upcoming retrial of The State of South Carolina v. Richard Alexander Murdaugh.
If you follow true crime in the English-speaking world, you likely know that the State already had one chance to prove that Murdaugh, a now disgraced, disbarred Hampton County attorney serving four decades for fraud, allegedly shot and killed his wife, Maggie, and adult son, Paul, at their rural Colleton County home on the night of June 7, 2021.
But the guilty verdicts and twin life sentences of that Spring 2023 trial were overturned when the S.C. Supreme Court learned that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill allegedly attempted to improperly influence the jury and, on May 13, ordered a retrial…