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New court documents reveal South Carolina state prosecutors are rejecting claims by Alex Murdaugh’s defense that the state withheld critical “raw” cellphone evidence.
The motion, filed Tuesday, is the state’s response to a motion Murdaugh’s legal team filed in September claiming it never received extraction files, keychain files and extraction logs from seized smartphones.
In March 2023, Murdaugh was convicted of the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
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Alex Murdaugh, right, is shown here with his family. His former law firm filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing him of using fake bank accounts to steal money from the firm and clients. (Fox News)
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He was sentenced to two life terms. However, his conviction was overturned in May 2026 after the South Carolina Supreme Court found that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill improperly influenced jurors.
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Murdaugh is scheduled for a new trial in April 2027.
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In this new round of court documents related to the case, prosecutors claim the defense already had the evidence — in some instances multiple times — and that its new account is “false,” “manufactured” and contradicted by its own emails.
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Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin presides as attorneys argue motions ahead of Alex Murdaugh’s April 2027 murder retrial in Lexington, S.C., Aug. 14, 2026. (Tracy Glantz of The (Columbia, South Carolina) State/POOL)
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The state released 40 pages of emails, file folder screenshots and signed discovery receipts spanning late 2022 to early 2023.
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Court records reveal South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) investigators provided full, unredacted raw extractions, password logs, keychain files and reports to defense experts as early as October and November 2022.
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Alex Murdaugh attends a judicial hearing on Monday, June 29, 2026, at the Marc H. Westbrook Judicial Center in Lexington, South Carolina. Murdaugh will be retried in the June 7, 2021, shooting deaths of his wife and son, after his original conviction was overturned due to jury tampering. (Tracy Glantz/The State via Pool)
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Furthermore, prosecutors produced emails from Jan. 20, 2023 — three days before jury selection began in the first trial — showing the defense team requesting a duplicate copy of Murdaugh’s phone extraction because they had misplaced the original.
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“The State will be glad to send the cell phone evidence to the defense yet one more time if they have somehow messed up or lost their copies again,” the motion states.
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Read the new motion:
Fox News Digital has reached out to Murdaugh’s defense team for comment.
