South Carolina legal scion Alex Murdaugh arrives at court for jury selection at his double-murder trial over the execution-style killings of his wife and son

The disgraced South Carolina attorney is set to go on trial charged with murder

He is accused of killing his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22 in June 2021

Jury selection for the three-week case is expected to last several days  

Former south Carolina legal scion, Alex Murdaugh, arrived at the Colleton County courthouse, this morning to begin trial for the ‘execution-style’ murders of his estranged wife and son.
Jury selection began today in the three-week-long double-homicide trial for the disgraced South Carolina attorney.The defendant’s wife Margaret ‘Maggie’ Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were found dead at the family hunting lodge in June 2021.
Surrounded by SWAT teams and sheriff’s officers, 54-year-old Murdaugh arrived at the courthouse handcuffed, wearing a white shirt and grey trousers.
Prosecutors say Murdaugh lured his wife and son to the 1,700-acre lodge and shot them.
The court also claims that his life was spiraling out of control amid years of opioid addiction and ballooning debts.

Alex Murdaugh arrives court as Jury selection begins in his double murder trial of in the killing of his wife and son

Murdaugh pled not guilty in June, and the blockbuster trial is expected to have wild allegations of dark family secrets, financial ruin and hedonistic excess.
Lawyers expect the selection to take several days before testimony can be heard in the courtroom.
A bench of 12 jurors will hear the evidence, with authorities taking 13 months of investigation to charge Murdaugh in connection with the crimes.
He has been charged with two counts of murder and insisted that the trial start as soon as possible.

A bench of 12 jurors will hear the evidence, with authorities taking 13 months of investigation to charge Murdaugh in connection with the crimes.
He has been charged with two counts of murder and insisted that the trial start as soon as possible.
Murdaugh pled not guilty in June, and the blockbuster trial is expected to have wild allegations of dark family secrets, financial ruin and hedonistic excess.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty but will ask for life without parole if he is convicted of murder – with the minimum sentence carrying a 30-year stint behind bars.

Alex Murdaugh double-homicide trial. Day one: Jury selection

The South Carolina Bureau of Investigation, conducted a 13-month long investigation before charging Murdaugh with two counts of murder in July, and a judge has set aside three weeks for the trial. Murdaugh, who has been in jail since October 2021, for financial crimes insisted on the trial beginning as soon as possible.
Jury selection began Monday morning as prosecutors and defense attorneys sifted through some 700 summons to find 12 jurors and several alternates. More than 200 people were brought in for a first round of questioning that lasted nearly three hours, but only about 30 were qualified for the pool of potential jurors.
When asked if they had heard of the case, all potential jurors confirmed that they had, with several being excused because they had ‘form opinions which cannot be changed’.

22-year-old Paul Murdaugh was shot in the feed room connected to the Moselle properties dog kennels, while his mother was shot five times, including in the back of the head, with a semiautomatic rifle. The pair lay dying just 30 yards from one another.
The only suspect in the case has adamantly insisted, from the moment he found the bodies of his wife and youngest son shot multiple times at the family’s estate in June 2021, that he is not the killer.
Last week prosecutors claimed that a Snapchat video was ‘critical to the case’, with Paul sending the footage shortly before 8pm on the night he died.
Investigators believe he and his mother died between 9pm and 9:30pm, and are seeking permission to call a Snapchat executive to testify as to the veracity of the video.
Creighton Waters, senior assistant deputy attorney general said: ‘Amongst other things, critical to the case is a video sent out to several friends at approximately 7:56 p.m. on the night of the murders.

As part of the evidence the prosecution is expected to introduce at trial are crime scene photos showing what appears to be blood droplets on the floor, a mannequin and an evidence marker in the feed room where Paul was fatally shot.
The court filing also has a close up of the blood spatter where Paul was shot twice – once in the chest and a second time which entered his left shoulder into his neck and brain.

‘The contents of this video is important to proving the State’s case in chief.’
The order was approved, with prosecutors not revealing what was in the Snapchat video during the hearing.
State forensic expert Dr Kenneth Kinsey last week described Paul’s horrific wounds, explaining he was was shot twice – with the second bullet entering the left shoulder into his neck and brain.
Kinsey said his ‘brain was completely detached from head’, adding that the 22-year-old was first struck in the chest as he stood in the feed room.

The room was connected to the Moselle properties dog kennels, while his mother was shot five times, including in the back of the head, with a semiautomatic rifle.
The pair died just 30 yards from one another, with Murdaugh’s lawyers asking Judge Newman to exclude a blood spatter expert from testifying for the state in the upcoming trial.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) enlisted Oklahoma-based forensics expert Tom Bevel to analyze a white T-shirt Murdaugh had been wearing the night of the murders.
Defense attorneys, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, argued in a previous motion that any blood on the shirt was transferred when Murdaugh found the bodies and ‘frantically checked them for signs of life.’

But Bevel concluded that the T-shirt is ‘stained with high-velocity blood spatter resulting from shooting Maggie and Paul’ after his initial report found the stains were ‘consistent with transfers and not back spatter from a bullet wound.’
Murdaugh’s attorneys accused SLED of ‘badgering’ Bevel into changing his report.
The T-shirt was later destroyed ‘for purposes of forensics testing by the unnecessary application of an oxidizing chemical stain,’ the court filing states.
Bevel’s initial report only came to light when prosecutors with the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office accidentally turned over a copy to Murdaugh’s defense team, according to the motion.

The white T-shirt is a critical piece of evidence for state prosecutors, who have suggested in court papers that the family patriarch shot his wife and son after fearing his decades-long corruption schemes would be exposed.
In the affidavit, Kinsey said he cannot make judgement on whether the stains on Murdaugh’s T-shirt are consistent with back spatter.