Murdaugh murder indictment is only the beginning in a fight for justice in South Carolina

Alex Murdaugh of Hampton County has been charged with killing his wife and son, but another indictment should be gripping the nation as well.

The Murdaugh case is an indictment of South Carolina’s justice system.

How does the coddled scion of a family that has represented justice in South Carolina’s Lowcountry for nearly a century move in the highest legal circles for decades while, according to other indictments, he is bilking the estate of the woman who helped raise his two sons and pocketing money belonging to a paraplegic law enforcement officer?

With gratitude to the State Law Enforcement Division for getting us to this point, it’s not enough for South Carolina to throw Alex Murdaugh in jail and say “case closed.” The legal system needs to prove it will hold accountable lawyers, bankers, judges, prosecutors and insurers — whoever aided the alleged financial fraud or looked the other way because Murdaughs don’t ever get caught.

Despite what his spinmeisters want us to believe, Alex Murdaugh did not act alone in racking up, so far, 85 charges involving $8.4 million in allegedly pilfered legal settlements.

Unfortunately, history shows us that an indictment to a Murdaugh is a mere speed bump. It’s just one more way to game the system.

Alex’s grandfather, Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh Jr, was indicted in 1956 by a federal grand jury for being part of widespread public corruption in the 14th Judicial Circuit. Murdaugh was alone among the accused public officials to get off scot-free.

But the federal prosecutors in that case linked Murdaugh with jury and witness tampering.

The judge made a statement that turned out to very telling for the future. He said: “This is a bad situation. The people in Colleton County began saying ‘to hell with the law’ and didn’t worry about the law at all. You people still have a lot of work to do to get the law back to its proper place in your county.”

Today’s Murdaugh saga has shown us gaping holes in South Carolina’s system of checks and balances as well as public accountability of judges and lawyers.

South Carolina’s legislative branch controls the judicial branch as the body that appoints judges — to the personal enrichment of lawyer-legislators practicing before judges whose careers they control. And when a lawyer is accused of wrongdoing, good luck in finding out anything about it from the lawyers who oversee ethical standards for the legal profession.

It’s even worse for judges. Try finding out what happened when an accusation of wrongdoing by a judge is filed. It is deliberately kept secret in South Carolina.

An investigation by The Post and Courier of Charleston and ProPublica found that more than 1,000 ethics complaints were filed against South Carolina judges over the past two decades. The news stories, headed “The Untouchables,” showed that the number of judges punished publicly as a result of all those complaints was zero.

If the public cannot trust the system of justice, there is no justice.

The case of a double homicide in the Murdaugh family has drawn the most attention by a nation agog at the goings-on in swampy South Carolina.

But more is on trial here.

It’s an entire system.

It’s an entire society.

This story was originally published July 14, 2022 at 12:22 PM.