Alex Murdaugh Says a State Agent Used False Evidence Against Him

Murdaugh’s Lawyers Take Aim at the Investigator Who Built the Case

Alex Murdaugh’s defense team says the investigator who led the case into the killings of his wife and son gave a grand jury evidence that was false, and they want the murder charges thrown out before he is tried again. In a motion filed this week, attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin allege that lead State Law Enforcement Division investigator David Owen presented “perjurious testimony and fabricated evidence” to the Colleton County grand jury that indicted Murdaugh. The claim reopens one of the most closely followed murder cases in the country at a delicate moment, with Murdaugh’s convictions already overturned and a new trial on the calendar.

Two Pieces of Evidence the Defense Says Do Not Hold Up

The motion focuses on two specific claims Owen made to the grand jury, according to the filing. The defense says Owen told grand jurors that ammunition recovered from weapons on the Murdaugh property matched ammunition used in the killings, even though the murder weapons themselves were never found. The second claim involves a white T-shirt Murdaugh wore the night of the killings, which Owen described as carrying high-velocity impact spatter linking him to the shootings.

The defense argues that conclusion was reached only after investigators consulted an Oklahoma blood-spatter expert, Tom Bevel, who initially found the stains were “consistent with transfers and not back spatter.” Confirmatory testing, the motion says, returned negative results for human blood on all 74 cuttings taken from the shirt. Murdaugh’s lawyers contend those results undercut the account jurors were given. The state has not conceded the point, and the allegations remain the defense’s characterization, not a finding by the court.

Grand jury testimony is not the same as the evidence a trial jury weighs; it is the basis on which charges are brought. The defense’s argument is that indictments obtained through false statements should not be allowed to stand, and that the problem reaches the foundation of the case rather than any single piece of trial testimony.

A Case That Was Already Sent Back for a New Trial

The dispute lands in an unusual posture. Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son Paul, but the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned those convictions in May 2026 after finding that a former county clerk, Rebecca Hill, had tampered with the jury. That ruling turned on jury conduct, not on the physical evidence now under attack, and it left the state free to try Murdaugh again.

A retrial is scheduled for April 5, 2027. With that date set, the new motion is part of the pretrial fight over what a second jury will, and will not, hear.

What Murdaugh’s Team Is Asking the Court to Do

Harpootlian and Griffin are asking Judge Debra McCaslin to dismiss all four indictments against Murdaugh, two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, on the basis that the grand jury was misled. They are also asking that the case be moved out of Colleton County to Charleston County before any retrial.

Murdaugh has not been reconvicted of anything. With his earlier convictions vacated, he is again a defendant awaiting trial, and the contested evidence was aired at his 2023 trial, where Griffin cross-examined Owen about the same grand-jury claims.

The Hearing That Comes Next

A pretrial hearing was set for August 14, 2026, to take up the motions, including the request to dismiss and the request to move the trial. Whether Judge McCaslin narrows the case, moves it, or leaves it intact will shape what the retrial looks like when it opens next spring. For now, the accusation that the state’s lead investigator built part of its case on evidence the defense calls false is a claim the court has yet to weigh.

References: Alex Murdaugh Asks Judge to Dismiss Murder Charges, Move Retrial (FITSNews) | Latest Crime and Trial News (Court TV)