Prosecution subpoenas Snapchat, Google to testify in upcoming Murdaugh trial
READ MORE
Alex Murdaugh Coverage
The Murdaugh family saga has dominated the news after another shooting, a resignation and criminal accusations — with Alex Murdaugh at the center of it all. Here are the latest updates on Alex Murdaugh.
Expand All
A representative from Snapchat has been subpoenaed to testify at Alex Murdaugh’s upcoming murder trial about a video his son, Paul, sent to friends in the last hour of his life.
It is one of two such orders signed by Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman, who is overseeing the Murdaugh trial, directing tech companies to produce witnesses for the double murder trial, set to begin jury selection Monday. The orders ask California judges to compel Google and Snapchat to send witnesses who can testify to the authenticity of the state’s digital evidence.
A representative from Snapchat will be asked to review a video Paul Murdaugh sent out via Snapchat’s app to several friends at approximately 7:56 p.m. on June 7, 2021, the night that Paul and his mother, Maggie, were murdered. They are believed to have been shot and killed around 9:00 that night at the dog kennels on the Murdaugh family’s 1,700 acre hunting lodge, Moselle.
Alex Murdaugh will stand trial beginning Monday in Colleton County in the killing of his wife and son.
“The contents of this video is important to proving the State’s case,” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters wrote in his petition.
The existence of a video on Paul’s phone set off a legal and PR tussle this past summer. Murdaugh’s defense attorneys accused the prosecution of leaking the existence of the minute-long video to the media while denying defense attorneys the opportunity to review it.
The video, allegedly taken right before before the murders, showed a “happy family... If you are going by the voices, it sounds like Paul, Maggie and Alex, and it appears that Paul is holding the phone and is videoing something on a dog, the dog’s tail possibly... you never see anyone on the video,” according to a source who spoke to The State at the time.
“They are talking back and forth. They are talking about the different game birds out there. I think one of the dogs was chasing or caught a chicken. There’s talk of that. You can hear a little bit of laughter,” the source said.
It is unknown if this is the same video that Paul sent via Snapchat.
Google has also been ordered to send a representative who can certify the authenticity of records that the Palo Alto-based search company provided in response to a search warrant. Their records indicated “no devices with google location data being stored by google were present at the time of the double murder,” according to the petition.
The representatives of both companies will be asked to certify that the evidence reflects “true and accurate record(s) kept in the normal course of business,” according to the petitions.
The prosecution is required to have a representative of the company that produced the records testify to their legitimacy before they can be submitted as evidence in front of the jury.
The subpoena and Newman’s attached approval will be provided to circuit court judges in California, who have been asked to compel Google and Snapchat to produce the witnesses.
These witnesses, also known as a “Custodian of Records,” are being subpoenaed to appear at the start of trial on Jan. 23.
The state of South Carolina will pay for the “reasonable and ordinary expenses” incurred by these witnesses, including food, travel and accommodation, according to the court filings.
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 2:25 PM.
_fitted.png)
