Murdaugh Asks Judge To Toss Homicide Indictments Before April Retrial

What happened at Friday's hearing

On Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, attorneys for Alex Murdaugh appeared before Circuit Court Judge Debra McCaslin in Lexington County, South Carolina, asking her to throw out the indictments that have charged him with murder since July 2022.

The indictments accuse Murdaugh of killing his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and younger son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, at the family's Moselle property in the South Carolina Lowcountry on June 7, 2021.

Defense attorney Jim Griffin told the court that former State Law Enforcement Division agent David Owen gave the Colleton County grand jury false testimony on two points: that blood spatter was found on a T-shirt Murdaugh wore the night of the killings, and that the same ammunition load used to kill Paul — buckshot in one chamber, large birdshot in the other — was found loaded in guns scattered across the property.

A SLED lab report from November 2021, eight months before Owen testified to the grand jury, found no human blood on the cuttings tested from the shirt, according to FITSNews, which covered the hearing live. No blood evidence was introduced at Murdaugh's original 2023 trial, and prosecutors have acknowledged the ammunition claim was also wrong.

Who's who in the case

Alex Murdaugh, 58, a disbarred South Carolina lawyer, is already serving decades in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients. He has admitted in court to being a thief and opioid addict but denies killing his wife and son.

Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were shot to death at the family's dog kennels on the Moselle property in June 2021.

David Owen is the former SLED agent who led the murder investigation and testified before the grand jury that indicted Murdaugh. He retired abruptly in 2024, not long after being named State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.

Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian are Murdaugh's defense attorneys. Creighton Waters is the lead prosecutor. Judge Debra McCaslin is presiding over the retrial.

"The blood from his murdered son sprang through the air — it's raining back on him — puts him there." — Jim Griffin, Alex Murdaugh's defense attorney, per CBS News

What the indictments and rulings show

The murder charges against Murdaugh have been in place since a Colleton County grand jury indicted him in July 2022. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2023, but the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out that conviction this year, ruling that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca "Becky" Hill improperly influenced the jury during the trial.

Murdaugh is now awaiting a second trial on the same two murder counts. Jury selection is set to begin April 5, 2027, in Sumter County, according to FITSNews.

His attorneys asked Judge McCaslin to dismiss the indictments "without prejudice" — a ruling that would wipe out the current charges but let prosecutors return to a new grand jury and seek fresh indictments. Prosecutors have said they would do exactly that if the motion succeeds, and the defense has said it won't try to stop them.

McCaslin did not rule from the bench Friday. She told the court she would issue a written decision the following week.

Separately, Murdaugh remains in prison on earlier convictions for financial crimes against former clients and his own law firm — sentences that run regardless of what happens with the murder case.

What each side told the judge

Defense attorney Jim Griffin argued that the false blood-spatter testimony was the only evidence tying Murdaugh to the exact place and time of the killings. "A phone call doesn't put him there. The video doesn't put him there," Griffin said, according to CBS News. "The blood from his murdered son sprang through the air — it's raining back on him — puts him there."

Griffin asked the judge to send the case back to the start. "What we're asking, your honor, is to reboot — go back to square one," he said, per CBS News.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters told the court the errors did not undermine the broader case, which also included a video Paul Murdaugh recorded near the kennels shortly before the killings in which Alex Murdaugh's voice can be heard — contradicting his earlier claims he wasn't there — along with evidence of the family's debts and Murdaugh's financial crimes nearing exposure. "This is what the agent understood at the time," Waters said, according to CBS News. "And it's ultimately not something that would cause a substantial effect on the grand jury or cast grave doubt when we look at all the other evidence that was presented."

In court filings, prosecutors wrote that "a single mistake is not bad faith," according to the Associated Press, carried by Scripps News and CBS News.

Near the end of the hearing, McCaslin turned to Waters with a question that may hint at where she's leaning: "If you had to go back to the grand jury, could you have it all done and ready to go by April 5th?" she asked, per Scripps News and CBS News.

A second murder case built by the same investigator

This isn't the first time a judge has scrutinized David Owen's work. A judge last year dismissed a different murder case Owen investigated — against Michael Colucci, accused of killing his wife, Sara Colucci — after it came out that Owen never told prosecutors or the defense that Sara Colucci's mother had informed him of a suicide threat her daughter made days before she was found dead by the same method she had described.

At Friday's hearing, Griffin quoted the judge who dismissed that case: "Our courts should demand better from the State. If the State wants to retrieve the defendant, it is to do so only after the State has presented the case to the grand jury, who shall have the benefit of the full measure of evidence in this matter," according to FITSNews.

Prosecutors have drawn a distinction between the two cases: they say Owen is accused of withholding evidence in the Colucci case, while in the Murdaugh case the disputed material involved evidence and reports the defense already had at the original 2023 trial.

Owen retired from SLED in 2024, not long after being named State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.

What happens next

Judge McCaslin told the court she would issue a written ruling the following week; WCIV reported the decision is due by Nov. 20, 2026. Whatever she decides, Murdaugh's retrial on the murder charges is still set to begin with jury selection April 5, 2027, in Sumter County — prosecutors have said that even if the current indictments are tossed, they can seek new ones from a fresh grand jury in time to keep that date.