A federal judge has dismissed Alex Murdaugh's lawsuit seeking $600,000 in legal fees from former court clerk Becky Hill, whose misconduct led to his murder convictions being overturned on appeal. This was reported by infohub.kz.
Murdaugh sued Hill in May, alleging she violated his right to a fair trial in the deaths of his wife and son. A jury found Murdaugh guilty, but the state Supreme Court overturned the convictions and life sentences earlier this year, stating that Hill's comments to jurors suggested the once-prominent lawyer was guilty and that his testimony in his own defense couldn't be trusted.
In his ruling Wednesday, Judge Richard Gergel wrote that the problem with Murdaugh's legal reasoning is that he would have had to spend the money anyway, because it wasn't Hill who investigated or pursued justice against him. "Plaintiff's claim contains a fatal flaw — the lack of a causal connection between the funds he expended for his defense in the first trial and Defendant's misconduct. Defendant had no role in the initiation of criminal charges against Plaintiff," Gergel wrote.
Murdaugh said in court papers he spent $600,000 from a retirement account to pay for his lawyers in his first trial and will need more money to pay them for his retrial next year. However, the claim was not satisfied by the court.
Even with his murder convictions overturned, Murdaugh remains in prison. He pleaded guilty to stealing around $12 million from his clients and is serving a 40-year federal sentence at the same time as a 27-year state sentence for his financial crimes. His retrial on the murder charges has been scheduled for April.
Investigators said Murdaugh was addicted to opioids and his complex schemes to steal money from clients and his family's law firm were starting to unravel, so he killed his wife and son to divert attention and buy time to find a way out of his problems.