Alex Murdaugh Appears In Court As Judge Sets April 2027 Trial Date — ENTIRE HEARING

Disbarred lawyer and disgraced South Carolina legal dynasty scion Richard Alexander "Alex" Murdaugh appeared in court on Monday (June 29) for the first time since the state Supreme Court overturned his convictions and ordered a new trial. This is the entire hearing with Judge Debra McCaslin. The court assigned McCaslin to the case; the original trial judge, Clifton Newman, retired. 06:17 defense attorney Dick Harpootlian 07:19 "We'd expect to find more evidence or less, and that's what's kind of hard to get people to understand, is we didn't find a lot, but why we didn't find lots, because it was clean, I mean, it was manipulated, this evidence removed from the scene." 11:00 "What I really want to know is about phone records, text messages, cell phones, video recordings, toxicology, fingerprints. You have all that discovery?" "We're not sure, but we need to, we need to review..." 12:23 "part of what we need to do, we need to hire additional experts based on some of some of the views we now have on some of the witnesses that both the state and the defense have" 12:59 Prosecutor Creighton Waters 20:43 defense: "We have eight expert witnesses. All of them are new. All of them are just beginning to get the information they need. The DNA we are told may take up to six months." 29:28 discussion about grand jury protective order 30:34 Waters: "One thing SDC is adamantly opposed to is having an inmate have a laptop. They are absolutely 100% opposed to that." 34:46 "Let me tell both of you, I took the liberty of calling the warden and talking to him about the laptop situation, and I, because I, too, used to practice law..." 35:26 " I talked to the warden. He will not allow a laptop..." 39:54 "The defense wanted the defendant to be unshackled in the courtroom..." 40:15 Harpootlian: "Jurors — potential jurors — are watching this right now. Wherever this goes, it’s going to be difficult to get a jury, and to the extent that bringing him around in a jumpsuit, shackled like an animal, impacts their view, it’s going to make it more difficult for us to get a jury." He had Murdaugh stand at the defense table. “Chained around the waist. Chained at the hands. Chained on the feet. This guy is not a serial killer. He’s not, you know, Ted Bundy." 44:39 DNA discussion "These murders happened in 2021. We're in 2026. 2021 there's no such thing as artificial intelligence." 51:05 Judge McCaslin: "Let's make sure we get a viable sample, and then we'll go forward, and we're going to go forward at the next pretrial. I promise you, the pretrial is not going to be that far away." 54:51 "certainly suggest we come to a venue like Lexington County, where there's plenty of room and have an extraordinary equipment that's accommodated everybody here, and and I think they've done a really good job with security and with the press and being organized, and this is my home county." 59:00 trial date discussion: April 5