Murdaugh defense seeks to dismiss murder charges

I want to take you live to South Carolina right now where Alex Murdoch is back in a courtroom. You're looking live at pictures that we are getting fed right now. That's the judge right there. This is a hearing for his murder retrial. A jury convicted Murdoch in 2023 of killing his wife Maggie and son Paul. But earlier this year, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction after ruling that a former clerk tampered with the jury and denied Murdoch a fair trial. Fox's Chelsea Torres is live at the Lexington County Courthouse with the very latest and Chelsea, you have been covering this for quite some time and you have been monitoring the court hearing. What can you tell us about what's happening right now? Hey, Tyler. Well, now for just over an hour, Murdoch's defense team has been arguing their stance, why they believe the murder charges should be dismissed altogether. So that's what they're asking the judge right now. The state prosecution has not had their chance to kind of counter that argument, but the defense basically is claiming that the lead investigator in this case had actually misled and falsified some forensic information to the grand jury. So this all comes down to the white t-shirt that Murdoch was wearing at the night of the murders Now, the state got that shirt tested in a lab and the lab actually showed that it was negative for any human blood. But then months later, those prosecutors hired a blood spatter expert who had not seen the state's lab results and actually concluded that there was blood on the shirt. So based on those findings, the lead investigator told the grand jury there was, in fact, blood on the shirt despite their negative lab results. So essentially, defense is saying that the prosecutors lied. Now, mind you, the state is pushing back and they're saying that they didn't falsify anything The defense also says the lead investigator misled the grand jury by claiming ammo from other Murdoch family shotguns on the property matched the same as the murder weapon, which it did not. Now, in this past hour that the defense has been arguing, they've been going through PowerPoints, they've been showing all of the different reasons and portions of part of those lab results of why they believe that they should be focused on the lab itself. And then hopefully we'll move on a little bit more once we hear more from the state and their prosecution their argument, hear what the judge has to say, and then move on to what the ammo portion part of this is. No matter what, though, Tyler, I mean, we've been hearing from the judge at every hearing that she is very adamant that this new murder trial will start in April of next year. Tyler? Well, we'll be certainly monitoring it. I know you'll have the very latest coming up on Fox 5 News at noon. So Chelsea Torres live and outside the Lexington County Courthouse in South Carolina. Appreciate your time, Chelsea, and we'll let you get back to monitoring that hearing.