A juror at Alex Murdaugh's trial made the bombshell admission on Monday that her decision to convict the disgraced former lawyer of murdering his wife and son was influenced by a court clerk.
The juror, identified as Juror Z, said that comments by Colleton County clerk Becky Hill throughout the six-week trial influenced her decision to find Murdaugh guilty of the 2021 murder of his wife, Maggie, and his son Paul. Among those comments, she said, was Hill's direction to watch Murdaugh "closely."
"To me, it felt like she made it seem like he was already guilty," Juror Z said during an evidentiary hearing on Monday to determine whether Murdaugh should get a new trial for jury tampering.
Previously, Juror Z wrote an affidavit stating that her March verdict was influenced by "pressure from other jurors." When former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, who questioned the juror, read her affidavit in court, the juror found that her previous statements were also correct.
Juror Z was the only member of the 12-person jury to say her verdict was influenced by Hill's testimony. Juror P did testify that Hill told jurors to watch Murduagh's body language when he took the stand during the trial.
After Juror Z's testimony, a court bailiff said the jurors waiting to testify before Toal were watching a live stream of the hearing on their phones. Toal told the court that she has since confiscated the jurors' phones. Two jurors admitted under oath that they were on their phones, and one said she briefly watched the hearing on Facebook. Both said that watching it did not impact their testimony.
South Carolina defense attorney Dayne Phillips told The Daily Beast that Juror Z's testimony that Hill's "improper statements influenced her verdict should be sufficient to result in a new trial (unless former Chief Justice Toal finds that the juror's testimony is not credible)."
"The credibility finding by the Court is critical to the outcome of this hearing because of the inconsistent testimony provided by other jurors," said Phillips, who has handled appellate cases in the state.
For her part, Hill denied ever making comments to jurors that were meant to influence their opinions on the case. She also denied ever taking a juror home after court.
"I usually give a little pep talk to the jurors," Hill said about some of her comments, noting the grueling nature of being on a jury. Those comments included telling the jury to "pay attention. It's a big day today."
"I did not have a conversation with any juror about anything related to this case," she later stressed.
Murdaugh's lawyers allege that Hill influenced the jury by telling them not to believe defense evidence, encouraging them to render a swift verdict, and having private conversations with the jury foreperson throughout the trial. Hill allegedly pushed for a conviction to secure herself a book deal and boost its future sales, defense lawyers say.
Hill testified Monday that while she did have private conversations with the jury's foreperson during the trial, they were all about logistics—including jurors needing tampons and tissues.
During the likely three-day evidentiary hearing, Hill and all of the trial's jurors will testify before Toal, who has been hearing cases in a semi-retired capacity and took over Murdaugh's case last month. If Toal ultimately decides that the jury would have acquitted Murdaugh if not for Hill, her staff, or the court, then she will declare a mistrial and order a new trial.
"You have done absolutely nothing wrong. None of you," Toal told the jurors on Monday ahead of their questioning, noting that she would call them up to the witness stand individually to ask them about the trial.
Murdaugh's defense team has minimal evidence to support their bid for a new trial. The allegations have since spurred two separate state probes into Hill, an ethics complaint about her alleged misuse of her office, and halted book sales of her memoir after her co-author accused her of plagiarism.
On Monday, Hill admitted that she plagiarized at least one part of her book and apologized for her actions. She also explained that she had a "fleeting thought" about writing about the Murdaugh case before the trial began but did not start the process in earnest until after sentencing.
Hill then denied allegations that she told a colleague that a murder conviction would be good for her book sales. A court clerk who helped Hill during the Murdaugh trial, however, contradicted Hill's denials.
While on the stand, Barnwell County court clerk Rhonda McElveen testified that before the trial, the two discussed writing a book about the Murdaugh trial "because she needed a lake house and I needed to retire." She said that Hill also brought up several times that a guilty verdict in the trial would "sell more books."
During the trial, McElveen said, she confronted Hill after hearing that the court clerk had taken a juror home.
"She said, 'I did. But we didn't talk about the case and [the bailiff] Mr. Bill was with me,'" McElveen said Hill responded.
Toal previously ruled that Hill would only be asked about what happened in the courthouse during Murdaugh's murder trial and her interactions with the jurors.
"This is not the trial of Mrs. Hill," she said. "This is not the time to explore every mistake, incorrect statement, or false statement ever made by this witness."
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