Alex Murdaugh sentencing: Disgraced SC attorney gets life in prison

ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams said he expects Alex Murdaugh will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, since prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty.

"I'm not expecting there to be much debate," Abrams said Friday on "Good Morning America."

"He's now in a tough spot, because he can't really now accept responsibility just after testifying for all these days and talking about how he didn't do it," Abrams noted. "What he could say is similar to what he said on the stand, which is: I regret, I did bad things to people, I'm sorry about that, I hurt people that I cared about, with sort of these broad allusions to the financial crimes without actually admitting anything with regard to the murders."

Abrams said he thinks it was a mistake on the defense team's part for Murdaugh to testify.

"To some degree, you could argue he had to take the stand," he explained. "Suddenly, there's evidence that he's there at the crime scene despite the fact that he's saying he wasn't there."

"So now it doesn't have to be him per se, but somebody's got to explain what he was doing there minutes before the crime occurs," he continued. "In retrospect, was it a mistake? Sure, because if he hadn't taken the stand, he might've been better off. I said at the time I thought it was a mistake for him to take the stand. But they did have to do something to explain why his voice was clearly there at the crime scene minutes before Maggie and Paul were killed."

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Alex Murdaugh sentenced to life in prison for double murder

ABC News’ Eva Pilgrim reports on the disgraced South Carolina former attorney’s life sentences for the murders of his wife and son.

ABCNews.com

Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said he believes Alex Murdaugh's lie about being at the scene of the crime just minutes before his wife and son were murdered was part of what made such a "compelling" case against him.

"It's not just being a liar. In this case, it was him being a liar about being at the scene with the victims just minutes before their cellphones went silent forever," Waters told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an interview Friday on "Good Morning America."

"I made the argument to the jury and the team did -- this was obviously a team effort -- that, you know, what kind of reasonable father or husband would lie to law enforcement about such a crucial fact in that moment, and only one who really knew what had happened?" he said. "When you lie about being at the scene with the victims just minutes before the crime happened, that's pretty compelling evidence."

Waters said he thinks the cellphone video placing Murdaugh at the scene minutes before the crime "absolutely" made a difference in guilty verdict.

"That was something that the defendant could never account for and I think, though, he was still hoping that that evidence wouldn't be as strong as it was," Waters noted. "He initially claimed -- because there was one young man who thought he heard him on the phone and he said, well, he's got to be mistaken. I think he thought he could get around that."

"But as we continued to put up family and friends, people who were very close to him, none of whom knew who he really was, it became very compelling," Waters said. "And I think that’s what motivated him to try to take the stand and see if he could give one last closing argument to these jurors."

The lead prosecutor said he was not surprised when Murdaugh decided to testify.

"I thought that he would do it all along," he added. "In this community, he's been able to talk his way out of accountability his entire life and people like that are convinced in their own ability to do so."

When cross-examining Murdaugh, the prosecution team's strategy was to "establish who he was," according to Waters.

"I thought it was very interesting that he would not even concede to these jurors that he was wealthy," Waters said. "And that was sort of the idea, was to get him talking about himself and about his life but then to, first of all, hammer home the financial aspects of this case and the many lies that he had told to people that trusted him and then move into the specifics of his new story that he was now telling the world for the first time, at least publicly. And I think that's very compelling and ultimately was convincing to the jury."

When asked about the jury only taking three hours to reach a verdict, Waters said: "We presented a very compelling and strong case, and I think that it didn't take them long to figure this out."

"They looked him in his eyes, as much as I've had the chance to do, and realized who this person really was." he added. “And I think that really was the final thing that led this jury to come to the right conclusion."

Waters said he hopes to see a "just sentence from the judge" on Friday morning.

"I do think that, in the end, we will have a just result for Maggie and Paul, who again we cannot forget in all of this," he said. "That's what this is really about and, thankfully, they had a voice yesterday when the jurors spoke."

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Juror speaks out after Alex Murdaugh found guilty in murder of wife, son

The disgraced South Carolina attorney was found guilty by a jury of brutally murdering his wife Maggie and younger son Paul at the family's property in 2021.

ABCNews.com

A juror who voted to convict Alex Murdaugh on Thursday told ABC News in an exclusive interview that the piece of evidence that convinced him the disgraced lawyer was guilty, was the cellphone video placing Murdaugh at the scene minutes before the murders of his wife and youngest son.

"I was certain it was [Murdaugh's] voice," Craig Moyer, a carpenter, said as he recalled the background voice he heard during his first watch of the video captured by Murdaugh's son. The video was taken at the family's dog kennels by Paul Murdaugh, 22, who later that night was brutally murdered along with his mother Margaret, 52.

"Everybody else could hear [Murdaugh's voice] too," Moyer said, referring to the other jurors.

Moyer's comments to ABC News' Eva Pilgrim came just hours after he voted to convict Murdaugh, concluding the small-town South Carolina saga which documented the downfall of a powerful attorney from a family which for generations exuded power over the state’s Lowcountry region.

Please watch "Good Morning America" on Friday at 7 a.m. ET to see more of Moyer's interview and ABC News' coverage of the Murdaugh case.

After nearly three hours of deliberations, a jury reached a guilty verdict Thursday in the double murder trial Alex Murdaugh, a disgraced South Carolina attorney who was charged with the murders of his wife and their younger son at their rural hunting estate in June 2021.

The bodies of Margaret "Maggie" Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22, were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds near the dog kennels at the family's estate in June 2021, authorities said.

Alex Murdaugh, 54, who called 911 to report the discovery, was charged with their murders 13 months later.

Jurors -- and the packed gallery -- heard testimony from dozens of witnesses since the trial started on Jan. 23 in the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina.

Here's a look at five key moments from the high-profile trial.