Here’s what Paul Murdaugh’s defense lawyers planned to argue during boat crash trial
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2019 Boat Crash Coverage
The crash of a Murdaugh family boat in 2019 killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and started a chain of events that would remain in the news two years later. Here are the stories from that crash.
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This story first published Aug. 17, 2021.
Had Paul Murdaugh gone to trial on felony charges of driving a boat while intoxicated, his attorneys planned to argue that conflicting police and witness statements and issues with evidence showed it wasn’t clear Murdaugh was driving the boat when it crashed in 2019.
The strategy for Murdaugh’s defense included disputing the conclusions from his blood draw showing his intoxication level, as well as motions to move the trial or bring in a jury from another county due to the publicity surrounding the crash and resulting death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
Jim Griffin, a Columbia defense attorney who, along with Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, represented Murdaugh, discussed with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette on Monday the team’s expected strategy for a trial that never happened. The charges against Murdaugh were dropped after he and his mother, Maggie, were found shot to death on June 7.
No suspects or motives have been identified, and investigators have not said whether the boat crash is related at all.
Murdaugh, from a prominent Lowcountry legal family, pleaded not guilty to three counts of boating under the influence in the Feb. 24, 2019 crash. The S.C. Attorney General’s Office released its entire case file on Paul Murdaugh on Monday because he can no longer be prosecuted.
From the hundreds of documents and statements and hours of videos gathered by investigators with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and the State Law Enforcement Division, the AG’s office planned to convince a jury that Murdaugh was driving the boat while drunk.
But his attorneys said the evidence wasn’t convincing. “Dick Harpootlian and I felt very confident in our defense that there was insufficient evidence Paul was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Griffin said. “Paul steadfastly maintained that he wasn’t driving when it crashed.”
Problems with evidence?
A 17-foot Sea Hunt boat carrying Murdaugh, Beach and four others crashed into bridge pilings in Archer’s Creek near Parris Island in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2019.
Several agencies responded to the crash, and a search began for Beach, who was still missing.
S.C. DNR officers were tasked with figuring out who was driving the boat when it crashed. It would turn out to be a difficult mission, marred by confusion and missteps, according to a civil petition filed by Connor Cook, one of those aboard. The petition alleged a conspiracy by officers existed to shift blame away from Murdaugh.
Defense attorneys for Murdaugh said they would have capitalized on that confusion in his criminal trial.
Griffin said they planned to challenge the use of Murdaugh’s blood-alcohol content as evidence. A toxicologist told The Packet that Murdaugh’s BAC was about 0.24, or three times the legal limit to operate a boat in South Carolina.
The morning of the crash, officers never asked for blood to be drawn from any of the passengers, according to DNR’s interview with Dr. Mark Mercier of Beaufort Memorial Hospital. The hospital ordered tests before officers got there.
One DNR investigator, Michael Brock, said they had planned to get a search warrant for blood samples once they figured out who the driver was.
They did not immediately determine who was driving, and investigators had to rely on the hospital’s blood sample rather than extracting their own.
That was a problem, according to Griffin, because the way hospitals draw blood is not the same as law enforcement’s procedures. Hospital staff swab a person’s arm with an alcohol disinfectant before drawing the blood, Griffin said — something police wouldn’t do.
As a result, Griffin said the alcohol swab artificially inflates the BAC. He also said the hospital blood draw takes a concentrated sample, which would further skew the BAC result.
There were other issues, too. Griffin said they would have shown there was no consensus among occupants that Murdaugh was driving.
DNR files show passengers of the boat gave conflicting statements to investigators about who was driving when they crashed. At the time, investigators were unsure whether it was Murdaugh or Connor Cook.
Some passengers, who later said Murdaugh was driving, initially said they didn’t see who was behind the wheel. Or they said Cook was last seen driving.
Murdaugh’s father, Alex, a prominent personal injury attorney in Hampton County and a volunteer prosecutor, notably tried to stop passengers from talking to police in the hospital.
One passenger, Anthony Cook, said in a March 2019 interview with investigators that he was worried about the Murdaugh family shifting blame from Paul Murdaugh to his cousin, Connor Cook.
“The Murdaughs are out to pin it on him,” he said.
For the trial, Griffin said two experts had been retained to reconstruct the crash. They would have testified about the speed and direction of the boat, based on GPS data.
“The path of travel is pretty consistent,” he said. “Paul, at his level of intoxication, could he operate in that controlled a manner or not? I don’t know. ... That would be a question for the jury.”
Family scrutiny
The public and media scrutiny of Paul Murdaugh would have been reason to ask that his case be “heard by a jury outside of Beaufort County,” Griffin said.
So much attention has been paid to Murdaugh because of public perception that he was benefiting from a criminal justice system in which his family has a lot of influence.
The murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh on June 7 in rural Colleton County have brought even more attention to the family, along with rampant speculation in the absence of an arrest.
Griffin said he stays in touch with Paul’s father, Alex.
“It’s hard to say how he’s doing,” he said. “He is grieving mightily, I can tell you that much.”
This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Here’s what Paul Murdaugh’s defense lawyers planned to argue during boat crash trial."
