Defense lawyers for convicted South Carolina lawyer Murdaugh say Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill violated her oath of office as well as their client’s constitutional right to an impartial jury.
Defense lawyers for convicted South Carolina lawyer Murdaugh say Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill violated her oath of office as well as their client’s constitutional right to an impartial jury.
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Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin accuse Hill, who was elected in 2020, of telling the jury “not to be fooled” by the defense team’s case.
In another serious charge, the defense attorneys allege that Hill “invented a story about a Facebook post to remove a juror she believed might not vote guilty.”
But as South Carolina attorney Sarah A. Ford and legal director for a victims’ assistance program noted via X (formerly Twitter), a number of mundane circumstances could prompt private conversations between a clerk of court and a jury leader, including medical appointments and scheduling issues.
In the defense’s narrative, Hill was allegedly motivated by two main factors: the removal of “a juror she believed might not vote guilty”; and her own self-interest, in publishing a book about the trial and participating in media coverage.
741’s case, the filing said, the female juror initially agreed to sign the affidavit, but Murdaugh’s lawyers were “unable to arrange with her a suitable time and place.”
If the attorneys can substantiate their claims against Hill, it would put a heavy burden on the prosecution to prove “that such contact with the juror was harmless to the defendant,” Murdaugh’s team says in the filing, citing a legal precedent.
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