Alex Murdaugh Wants Indictments Tossed — Says Lead Cop Lied To Grand Jury

What's happening Friday

Alex Murdaugh's defense team is in a South Carolina courtroom Friday asking Judge Debra McCaslin to throw out the original murder indictments against him — the charging documents that sent him to trial for killing his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, in June 2021 on the family's property in Colleton County.

Their argument is specific: the lead investigator on the case, State Law Enforcement Division agent David Owen, gave the grand jury testimony that wasn't true. Defense lawyers say that testimony improperly secured the indictments that led to Murdaugh's conviction.

Murdaugh was convicted of both murders in 2023 and sentenced to life in prison. The South Carolina Supreme Court later threw out that conviction and sentence, ruling that a court clerk had improperly influenced jurors during the trial. That ruling is why Murdaugh now faces a retrial, currently set for April.

The two claims the grand jury was told

Defense attorneys say Owen told the Colleton County grand jury that blood spatter was found on a T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the killings. According to WTOC, forensic lab testing performed on that shirt failed to detect human blood — and no such blood evidence was ever introduced at trial.

Owen also told grand jurors that the same ammunition load used to kill Paul — buckshot in one chamber, large birdshot in the other — was found loaded into weapons "all over" the Murdaugh property. That wasn't the case. WTOC reports Owen later conceded during trial proceedings that the earlier statement was inaccurate.

Prosecutors don't dispute that both pieces of testimony were wrong. They argue the errors didn't corrupt the grand jury proceeding, writing in their response that "a single mistake is not bad faith," according to the Associated Press.

"Did this affect the outcome of the grand jury proceeding? If this information had not been presented, can they make an argument that an indictment would not have occurred?" — Sam Bassett, criminal defense attorney, to WTOC

Who David Owen is, and his record

Owen led the Murdaugh double-murder investigation for SLED. Beyond the disputed shirt and ammunition claims, he also testified to the grand jury about a video Paul Murdaugh recorded the night of the killings in which Alex Murdaugh's voice can be heard at the scene — testimony prosecutors say contradicts denials Murdaugh later made. Owen told grand jurors about the family's mounting debts and how Murdaugh's financial schemes were close to being discovered, which prosecutors say is the motive behind the killings.

Owen abruptly retired in 2024, not long after being named State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. A judge last year threw out a separate murder case Owen had worked, after learning that the victim's mother had told him about a suicide threat her daughter made days before she died — information Owen never passed along to either prosecutors or defense attorneys.

The record: charges, the retrial, and what Murdaugh admits

Murdaugh, 58, faces murder charges for killing his wife and son on the family's sprawling property in the South Carolina Lowcountry. He's already serving decades in prison on separate convictions for stealing millions of dollars from his law clients, and has admitted in court to being a thief, an insurance cheat, a bad lawyer and a longtime opioid addict.

He denies killing Maggie and Paul. His lawyers have repeatedly pointed to the absence of any DNA or blood found on Murdaugh or his clothing, despite prosecutors' contention that the killings happened at close range with powerful weapons that were never recovered.

Prosecutors' theory is that Murdaugh killed his wife and son believing the sympathy generated by their deaths would buy him time before his thefts from clients and his law firm came to light.

Even if McCaslin grants Friday's motion, it may not change much. Prosecutors say they can take the case back to a grand jury and seek new indictments as soon as next month, and Murdaugh's own attorneys acknowledge they have no way to stop that. The April retrial is expected to proceed regardless of how this particular ruling comes down.

What each side is saying

Prosecutors, in their written response to the motion, conceded Owen's mistakes but drew a legal line between error and misconduct: "a single mistake is not bad faith," they wrote, per the Associated Press.

Outside legal analysts describe a genuinely difficult question for the judge. "Did this affect the outcome of the grand jury proceeding? If this information had not been presented, can they make an argument that an indictment would not have occurred?" criminal defense attorney Sam Bassett told WTOC. "So, there is another level of analysis that the courts are going to have to do as well."

Murdaugh's attorneys' position, as described in their filing, is that the disputed blood and ammunition testimony improperly secured the indictments against their client — testimony the defense says the government's own evidence later contradicted.

How the case got back to this point

This isn't the first pretrial skirmish in Murdaugh's path back to court. His attorney, Dick Harpootlian, appeared alongside him at an evidentiary hearing over the retrial at the Lexington County Judicial Center on Oct. 16, 2026, part of the ongoing fight over how the case will be tried the second time.

The underlying reason there is a second trial at all traces back to the South Carolina Supreme Court's ruling that a court clerk improperly influenced jurors during Murdaugh's original 2023 trial — a finding that wiped out his murder conviction and life sentence even though it had nothing to do with the evidence against him.

Friday's hearing adds a second track to that retrial fight: whether the indictments that started the case were themselves built on false testimony. WTOC reports a ruling on the dismissal motion is expected following the hearing.

What happens next

Judge Debra McCaslin is set to hear arguments on the dismissal motion Friday and is expected to rule afterward. If she denies it, the case proceeds toward the April retrial as scheduled. If she grants it, prosecutors say they can seek new indictments from a grand jury as soon as next month — a path Murdaugh's own attorneys concede they cannot block — meaning the April retrial is likely to happen either way.