Three years after Alex Murdaugh walked out of the Colleton County Courthouse with two life sentences for the murder of his wife and son, the disgraced lawyer is returning to court Monday for a do-over of his prosecution under another bright spotlight.

This time, Murdaugh will be walking into the Lexington County Judicial Center, in the South Carolina Midlands. But reporters and spectators are expected to still show up in force for his first public appearance since the state’s highest court threw out his murder and weapons convictions last month, and ordered a new trial.

The S.C. Supreme Court found that the Colleton County Clerk of Court at that time, Rebecca Hill, had prejudiced the jury against Murdaugh. The court assigned a new judge, Debra McCaslin, a Chapin resident in Lexington County, to preside over his retrial.

It’s unclear right now where the new trial will be held. It’s one of the issues expected to be discussed in court Monday and during future hearings, said Robert Kittle, spokesperson for the S.C. Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting the case. 

Murdaugh’s alleged fatal shootings of his wife, Margaret, and son, Paul, on the family’s rural Colleton County property in 2021 have become one of the highest-profile criminal cases in state history. 

Safety and security at Lexington courthouse

On Thursday, the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department and state court administrators held a briefing for journalists interested in covering next week’s hearing. Around 50 people attended the virtual meeting, including reporters from national and international media organizations.

Friday afternoon was devoted primarily to technical preparations by broadcast and streaming outlets, coordinated by Lexington County Sheriff's Department personnel.

This Sunday afternoon at the judicial center parking lot, the Lexington Police Department will begin letting media vans take their spots to minimize the rush on hearing day.

People from around the country and beyond descended on Walterboro, where the Colleton County Courthouse is located, during Murdaugh’s 2023 trial that lasted six weeks. Murdaugh pleaded not guilty to the killings. But he remains in prison, serving time for state and federal financial crimes to which he’d admitted committing as an attorney.

Law enforcement officials are now preparing for sizable crowds to form at the Lexington courthouse on Monday, though Judge McCaslin has said the hearing would not take up “substantive matters,” only procedural issues. 

“We could see people lining up early Monday morning or even before,” said Capt. Adam Myrick, spokesperson for the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department. 

Myrick said his agency’s top priority that day will be in continuing to keep the courthouse and the surrounding areas safe and secure. Local law enforcement, he said, has plans in place to protect defendants, attorneys, judges and other officers of the court each day.

Dick Harpootlian, one of Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, told the Chronicle that his team has no worries about security surrounding the Lexington hearing.

Request for transfer of trial venue

Murdaugh’s attorneys have asked McCaslin to move the trial outside the 14th Judicial Circuit, which includes Colleton County. 

The defense team has argued that Murdaugh, 58, won’t be able to get a fair and impartial trial in the five-county area, where there’s been intense media coverage about him, his family and their role as local prosecutors.

The area has also been at the center of multiple books, films and TV series about the murder case, which his attorneys said “have shaped public opinion.”

Defense lawyers have also made a court request for independent lab testing of DNA evidence collected from underneath the fingernails of Margaret Murdaugh, 52. State police investigators previously tested the evidence, showing it belonged to an “unknown and unrelated male,” Murdaugh’s team said in a June 24 filing.

Prosecutors have not yet responded to this motion, as well as Murdaugh’s request to have in-prison computer access to his case files.

Hill, who resigned as Colleton County clerk of court in 2024, pleaded guilty last year to showing a reporter sealed court exhibits in the Murdaugh murders and then lying about it. She was sentenced to probation.

The new elected clerk of court, Gary Hale, is expected to attend the case hearing in Lexington. 

First-come, first-served seating   

The courtroom for Monday’s hearing can accommodate up to 220 people, but Myrick is expecting local fire marshals to lower the capacity for the hearing because of materials or equipment that attorneys and journalists will be bringing in. 

McCaslin has reserved courtroom seating for certain media representatives. Other members of the public will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis, because of the limited space, the judge said in a written order.

No one, besides journalists covering the hearing, will be allowed to bring cellphones or other electronic devices into the courtroom.

“Those who hope to land a seat in the courtroom should leave their cellphone in their car,” Myrick said. He added that people won’t be allowed to go in and out of the courtroom once the hearing begins.

Whether the Lexington courthouse will be under the Murdaugh case spotlight for only a day, or if it will be part of the case history for longer, remains to be seen.