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LEXINGTON, S.C. -- Alex Murdaugh's defense can do their own tests of unidentified DNA found under his wife's fingernails after she and her son were shot to death in 2021, a judge said Friday, part of an increasingly bitter battle over what evidence can be used in his murder retrial next year.
The DNA belonged to a male who was not a member of the Murdaugh family, and investigators haven't found a match. Although this piece of DNA evidence didn't feature prominently in the first trial in 2023, the defense wants to test it themselves at a private lab. The judge called Friday's hearing after Murdaugh's lawyers filed a flurry of motions saying prosecutors were dragging their feet sharing evidence.
Murdaugh, a once-rich and imposing heir to a Southern legal dynasty, is scheduled to face another jury in April over the killings of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, on their sprawling property in the rural Lowcountry region of South Carolina. While admitting he is a thief, insurance cheat, bad lawyer and longtime opioid addict, the 58-year-old Murdaugh has adamantly denied the killings.
The state Supreme Court overturned his convictions earlier this year, ruling that a court clerk influenced jurors during his trial. The case has captivated the true crime world with its mix of treachery, corruption, power and Southern accents.
Judge Debra McCaslin refused to let the defense examine every casing and bullet found in shootings for the past five years in eight surrounding counties involving the same type of gun as one of the weapons used in the killings. The judge called it a fishing expedition.
"If there's any casings that come through that's going to match this crime, red flags are going up," McCaslin said of testing the state has done on all the evidence. "Bells are going to ring and you're going to know something is going on, and none of that has happened."
The judge ended Friday's hearing by admonishing both sides to be professional and not turn the trial into a circus, after barbed comments like "facts matter" and "glad to hear it."
"Y'all need to stop this, OK?" McCaslin said. "I don't want this tit for tat between y'all. Y'all are lawyers -- you're professionals. This is a court. This isn't a sound bite."