A South Carolina judge denied Alex Murdaugh's bid for a new double-murder trial on Monday after his defense team accused a clerk of court with tampering with a jury.
Judge Jean Toal ruled that even if Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill did tell jurors to watch Murdaugh's actions and body language on the stand, the defense failed to prove that such comments directly influenced their decision to find him guilty.
Toal said after reviewing the full transcript of the six-week trial, she couldn't overturn the verdict based "on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-seeking clerk of court."
One member of the jury that convicted Murdaugh of murdering his wife and son testified that Hill made the comments and it indicated to her she thought Murdaugh was guilty. But the 11 other jurors said they based their guilty verdicts only on the testimony, evidence and law presented at trial, and just one of them mentioned hearing anything similar.