What will he wear? Murdaugh lawyers, prosecution argue over clothes
Prosecutors and defense attorneys for Alex Murdaugh have been arguing over whether he can wear street clothes when he appears in court in Lexington County on Monday for the first public hearing since his double-murder conviction was overturned.
The S.C. Supreme Court on May 13 overturned Murdaugh’s 2023 convictions for murder in the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at their family estate in rural Colleton County. Prosecution and defense attorneys are now in the early stages of preparing for a retrial.
Murdaugh should be allowed to appear at Monday’s pretrial hearing unshackled and in civilian clothing because the news media’s cameras would otherwise broadcast prejudicial images of him in prison garb to potential jurors, his lawyers argued in a motion to Judge Debra McCaslin.
“Mr. Murdaugh’s convictions for non-violent white-collar crimes in no way justify presenting him to the jury pool as a shackled prisoner in a prison jumpsuit via video cameras at televised pretrial hearings,” defense lawyers wrote.
That position was opposed by lead Murdaugh prosecutor Creighton Waters in his own motion, filed Thursday.
“Murdaugh is not just a pre-trial detainee; he is an inmate serving a very long sentence.” Waters argued, referring to Murdaugh’s extensive financial crimes to which he has pleaded guilty.
“The first two steps of any escape attempt are to become unrestrained and to get into civilian clothes,” Waters argued.
However, Waters indicated that at the actual trial, Murdaugh may be allowed to appear before the jury in civilian clothes.
“While admittedly there is wide public interest in the case, that is no basis to ignore normal security concerns in a nonjury setting, and no basis to Murdaugh’s request to be treated differently from his fellow inmates in court simply because the crimes he allegedly committed have received media attention,” Waters wrote.
Several hours after Waters filed his motion, Murdaugh’s attorneys gave up the fight to get their client into civilian clothes for Monday’s hearing. They will accept Murdaugh’s being in prison garb.
At Murdaugh’s first trial, until he was found guilty, he wore an outfit that might be called country club casual: a quality blue blazer, a button-down dress shirt with no tie and khaki slacks. Murdaugh, a disbarred lawyer, is from a politically and socially prominent Low County family and was once well-to-do. In recent years, his case has attracted what can only be called a tsunami of news coverage.
Media interest high
When Murdaugh appears on Monday, a lot of eyes will be watching.
As of Friday, more than 30 news outlets, filmmakers and podcasters have signed up for priority seats in Judge McCaslin’s windowless courtroom on the fourth floor of the Lexington County courthouse. The news organizations include The Wall Street Journal, The State, The Post & Courier, The Daily Mail, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Dateline NBC, SC Public Radio, WIS 10, WLTX-19, WACH Fox 57 and the Lexington Chronicle.
Court TV will broadcast the proceedings live.
Although Murdaugh is giving up his efforts to appear in civilian clothes in the pretrial hearings, he expects at any future trial to be allowed to wear civilian clothes so as not to prejudice the jury against him, his lawyers said.
“But for now, Mr. Murdaugh does not want to create a distraction for the court or even the State,” defense attorneys wrote.
Consequently, he is asking that Monday’s hearing focus on matters of substance, such as the issue of getting the DNA found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails and his pending motion to transfer venue from Colleton County, where a jury in 2023 found Murdaugh guilty of killing his wife and son, defense attorneys said.
In his motion, Waters threw some zingers about Murdaugh’s character.
“This case is ultimately about the fact that Defendant thinks he is special,” Waters wrote. “It is not the State or the S.C. Department of Corrections fault that Defendant is serving a long sentence, and he should not be able to simply ignore the consequences of what he admittedly did.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys replied, “Mr. Murdaugh has admitted his many serious financial crimes, and he accepts the consequences of those crimes — decades of imprisonment, probably for the remainder of his life — without complaint. If the State wants to use that as a public spectacle so be it.
“Mr. Murdaugh will not waste the court’s time at the upcoming status conference arguing about the optics of the status conference.”
In a footnote in their filing to give up their bid to have Murdaugh wear civilian clothes, defense attorneys got in a zinger of their own.
They reminded Waters that in his filings to the Supreme Court urging the high court not overturn Murdaugh’s murder conviction, he had decribed Murdaugh as having a “calculating, manipulative psyche” that was trying to improperly overturn his double-murder conviction.
Obviously, the five Supreme Court justices disagreed, the defense team wrote.
Murdaugh’s attorneys are Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Margaret Fox and Phil Barber.
In March 2023, Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences after a Colleton County jury found him guilty of killing Maggie and Paul. Those sentences were vacated when the Supreme Court overturned his convictions.
Murdaugh contends he is innocent of the killings and that another person, or persons, killed his wife and son.
Murdaugh, who is confined in an Upstate maximum security state prison, is still serving a 27-year state sentence for financial crimes and a concurrent 40-year federal sentence for federal fraud violations he committed while carrying out his financial crimes.
Judge McCaslin was assigned to this case recently by Chief Justice John Kittredge. Clifton Newman, presiding judge in Murdaugh’s first trial, has retired.
In an order published Friday, McCaslin said the Monday hearing is “a status conference and only matters related to scheduling, discovery, and other procedural matters will be discussed.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 4:10 PM.