An attorney for Alex Murdaugh said the disgraced South Carolina lawyer turned convicted killer is "extremely angry" in light of allegations of jury tampering against court clerk Rebecca Hill, adding that he once considered her "a friend of his."
Murdaugh's attorney, Jim Griffin, joined "The Story" Wednesday less than 24 hours after dropping a bombshell motion demanding a new trial based on allegations that Hill tampered with the jury and swayed them toward a guilty verdict in the high-profile case.
"What the jurors said about her conduct is absolutely shocking. It’s shocking," Griffin said. "I spoke with Alex today. He is extremely angry and he’s thankful for everything that we continue to do on his behalf. But he thought that Becky Hill was a friend of his. He has known her while he was practicing law. These revelations that the jury had sworn to, the jurors, completely caught him off guard and frankly has caught us off guard."
In their motion, Murdaugh's attorneys cited "newly discovered evidence" obtained during conversations with two jurors, alleging that Hill urged the panel to "reach a quick verdict" and that she had "frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson" to push them toward a guilty verdict.
The defense team also alleged that Hill presented false information to the judge to get a juror she thought was sympathetic to Murdaugh kicked off the panel, while accusing her of discussing Murdaugh's guilt with jurors and trying to coerce a conviction so she could secure a book deal.
Griffin said his legal team began to hear rumblings of inappropriate behavior by Hill after the verdict was rendered in the double murder trial. However, he told anchor Martha MacCallum, there was a "zone of silence" around the jury.
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"We were advised that we might be well-served to investigate it. We did. We started out pretty quickly. No doors would open for us. There was a zone of silence around the jury. We reached out. We did not get any response. Then things gradually changed," Griffin said.
Griffin said he believes Hill's grandstanding and memoir, "Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders," which came out in August, was the "impetus for a number of jurors coming forward that did not like the things that she did during the course of the trial."
Hill is accused of getting one juror booted from the panel Feb. 28 on the eve of deliberations by falsely telling Judge Clifton Newman that the woman's ex-husband had accused her in a deleted Facebook post of talking about the case while drinking alcohol and revealing her plans to acquit Murdaugh. Hill even wrote about the incident in her book.
The lawyer said Hill falsely told the juror and Judge Newman that SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, met with the juror's ex-husband who confirmed the claims made in his Facebook post.
WATCH REBECCA HILL'S FOX NATION INTERVIEW ON ‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDAUGH’ HERE
"None of that was true," he told MacCallum. " We talked to the ex-husband. He had not been interviewed by SLED. It did not happen….there’s no such Facebook posts to say that. When Ms. Hill was asked to produce the Facebook post, she said it had been deleted and found an apology post posted by someone with the ex-husband's same name, but the dates on the apology post predated anything she claimed she saw on Facebook."
Griffin emphasized that the defense team does not believe Judge Newman was aware of Hill's alleged activities when the juror was booted from the trial.
"We don’t think that in any form or fashion. We had maybe three days of in camera hearings during the course of the trial dealing with these issues," he said. "Ultimately Judge Newman felt like the jury was being whipsawed, and it was best to remove her. We're not here to criticize the information he had, but we knew know the information presented to him was completely false. And we know this was a favorable juror for the defense."
Murdaugh, 55, was sentenced to two life terms in prison in March for the fatal shooting of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and his son, Paul Murdaugh, in June 2021.
Hill, 55, stood in the Colleton County Courthouse March 2 and read the guilty verdict, which took the panel less than three hours to reach.
Many spectators were stunned by the swiftness of the decision, especially after a six-week trial. But the motion argues that Hill hurried the deliberations by denying the six smokers on the panel smoke breaks and threatening to send them to a hotel if they didn't wrap up that night.
Griffin said the defense team sent a letter to the U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina, requesting a federal probe into Hill's alleged misconduct. Murdaugh's lawyers are also requesting the case be moved from the court of appeals to trial court to begin the process of a new trial.
Murdaugh has insisted he's innocent and has the backing of his surviving son, Buster, who gave an exclusive interview to Martha MacCallum on Fox Nation's docuseries "The Fall of the House of Murdaugh." The series also features an interview with Hill, who spoke openly about experience throughout the trial and her reaction to the double murder verdict.
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Sign up today on Fox Nation to stream ‘The Fall of the House of Murdaugh,’ featuring Fox News' Martha MacCallum's exclusive interview with Alex Murdaugh's son, Buster and other key players in the case.
Fox News' Rebecca Rosenberg contributed to this report.
