Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced South Carolina lawyer who murdered his spouse and son, has been given two consecutive life sentences.
The jury deliberated for lower than three hours on Thursday earlier than discovering him responsible of fatally capturing his spouse, Margaret, 52, with a rifle exterior canine kennels on their rural Colleton County property in South Carolina on 7 June 2021.
On the identical day, he shot his 22-year-old son Paul twice with a shotgun.
Prosecutors had mentioned the lawyer carried out the killings in an effort to distract from the actual fact he had been stealing tens of millions of {dollars} from the household agency and purchasers to feed his drug behavior.
During the trial, the jury heard from greater than 75 witnesses and have been proven nearly 800 items of proof.
The courtroom was advised concerning the purchasers, family and friends members he had betrayed, in addition to his failed try to faux his personal demise as a part of an insurance coverage fraud.
The Murdaugh household have featured in a preferred Netflix docuseries – Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal – which particulars a lot of the controversies linked to them.
Before his homicide cost, he was in jail awaiting path on 100 or so different costs, which ranged from fraud, to tax evasion.
In sentencing, the choose mentioned: “You have turned from lawyer to witness, and now have an opportunity to make your final appeal as an ex-lawyer”.
Murdaugh, as he has carried out all through the trial, maintained his innocence, saying he “would never under any circumstances” damage his spouse and son.
Read extra:
Trial of lawyer discovered responsible of murdering spouse and son prompts reopening of investigations into different deaths
Two murders, a suicide plot and thriller over a housekeeper’s demise – the questions swirling round Murdaugh
The choose mentioned: “it might not have been you, it might be the monster you become when you take… opioids”.
Creighton Waters, the prosecutor, mentioned: “The depravity, the callousness, the selfishness of these crimes are stunning.
“The lack of regret and the easy method during which he’s, together with right here, sitting proper over there on this witness stand – your honour, a person like that, a person like this man, ought to by no means be allowed to be amongst free, law-abiding residents.”
The Murdaugh household was a part of the state’s authorized scene for greater than a century, together with his brother operating the agency that was arrange greater than 100 years in the past.
Murdaugh was sentenced in the identical courtroom that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather tried instances in because the elected prosecutor for greater than 80 years.
A portrait of his grandfather which hung behind the constructing was eliminated.
Source: information.sky.com”