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Murdaugh Defense Targets Investigator in Retrial Motion · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine you're the lead detective on, like, the trial of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the century.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: You have this massive 74-page forensic report sitting right on
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: your desk.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: And it proves that your prime suspect's shirt has absolutely
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: zero trace of blood on it.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: None at all. None.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: But then, a few weeks later, you walk into a
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: grand jury room, you raise your right hand, sit under oath,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: look those jurors dead in the eye, and you testify
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that the shirt was covered in blood spatter.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Which is just, I mean, it's staggering.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: It's insane. Today, we're looking at how the state's star
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: investigator did exactly that. And whether that one single decision
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: is about to completely obliterate the entire Alex Murdaugh retrial.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It is a scenario that fundamentally short circuits how we
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: believe the justice system operates.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, completely.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: We're so conditioned to view these massive trials through the
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: lens of the final verdict. But today we are basically
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: prying open the black box of how the state actually
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: manufactures a case from the ground up.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: OK, let's unpack this. Welcome back to another deep dive, everyone.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Our mission today isn't to just rehash the crime scene
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: at Moselle.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Right. We've all heard that part.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. If you're joining us, you already know the basic
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: stakes of the Alex Murda saga. So what we are
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: doing today is pulling apart a really fascinating transcript from
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the Law and Crime Network.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: It's a great source.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It really is. We're looking at some incredibly sharp legal
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: analysis from defense attorney Lori Murray and host Anjanette Levy,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: specifically regarding the upcoming retrial.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Which is scheduled for April 1st, 2027, right?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Yep, April 1st. And the inciting incident for our entire
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: conversation today is this bombshell motion filed by Murdo's defense team.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: And it's not a small motion.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: No, they aren't just arguing their client's innocence and they
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: aren't just asking a judge to, you know, suppress a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: piece of evidence. They are going straight for the jugular.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really are.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: They have filed a motion to throw out the murder
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: indictment entirely.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Which, legally speaking, is the equivalent of asking a judge
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: to unring a very loud, very public bell. Right. It's
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: an aggressive scorched earth maneuver. But, I mean, it sets
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: up exactly why we need to examine this today.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Because this motion transforms the conversation from a debate over
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: one man's guilt into like a master class on the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: actual mechanics of a grand jury.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: It gets into the threshold of probable cause and the
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: terrifying ripple effects when the designated guardians of truth, the investigators,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: are accused of weaponizing deception while under oath.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So let's get right into the anatomy of this alleged deception.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: We have to start with Exhibit A, which forms the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: real bedrock of the defense's outrage here.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: The Phantom Blood?
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, the Phantom Blood and the white T-shirt. Let's briefly
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: reset the board for everyone on the night of June 7th, 2021.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Colleton County deputies are at the Moselle property.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Right after the murders.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Right. And the lead investigator for SLED, David Owen, arrives
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: on the scene. One of his first critical moves is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: securing Murdaugh's clothing.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Standard procedure.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So Murdaugh goes into the master bedroom, disrobes, while
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Owen maintains a visual on him, and hands over his clothes.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: He hands over his orange and pink tennis shoes, some
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: green shorts, and a white T-shirt. Okay. Now, Owen explicitly
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: testified that he looked at that white T-shirt that night
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and didn't notice a single thing out of the ordinary. Right.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And to understand the gravity of what happens next, we
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: really have to look at the massive chasm between the
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: scientific reality of that physical shirt and the narrative that
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was strategically fed to the public.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The leak.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: The leak, yeah. Months before the first trial kicked off,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: this highly inflammatory story leaked to a media outlet called
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Fitz News.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And what did it say?
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: The headline was essentially, That high-velocity blood spatter was found
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: on that exact white T-shirt.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Which is just game over in the court of public opinion.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you read that headline while you're eating
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: your breakfast in Calton County, the narrative is instantly cemented
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in your brain.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: He had blood on his shirt. He must be the shooter. Right.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: The jury pool is effectively poisoned before a single subpoena
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: is even issued by the state.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It creates this heavy anchor of guilt. But then,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you know, we fast forward to the actual trial. And
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the scientific reality is finally unveiled.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And it was a shocker.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: It was. The defense calls a different SLED agent to
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: the stand, Agent Zapata. She's the forensic expert who physically
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: tested that white T-shirt in the laboratory.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: And her testimony is an absolute bombshell. Because she didn't
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: just swab the shirt once or twice. She testified that
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: she took 74 separate cuttings from that one T-shirt.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I need to pause on that for a second because...
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: The sheer volume of that testing is staggering. 74. 74
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: cuttings from a single T-shirt. I mean, they didn't just
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: test this thing. They practically reduced it to microscopic confetti.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Pretty much.
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  Speaker 1: They mapped it on a grid. They were looking for
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the absolutely smallest, most microscopic trace of hemoglobin imaginable. And
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the result of that exhaustive, multi-week forensic deep dive?
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Zero.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Zero. Not a single one of those 74 cuttings tested
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: positive for human blood The test came back entirely negative.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the collision between that definitive science
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and the procedural machinery of the state.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: How do you mean?
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Well, right in the middle of this timeline, SLED agent
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: David Owen walks into the Colleton County Grand Jury Room.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: He's there to secure the formal murder indictment.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And the sources note he was using a prepared outline.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: He wasn't just winging it from memory.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So he had notes he was reading from.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. And according to the transcript, he sat under
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: oath and told the grand jurors that a separate expert
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: out in Oklahoma had found multiple particles of blood spatter
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: on the shoulders and the front of Alex Murdoch's shirt.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. He stated a scientifically disproven theory as a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: matter of empirical fact to secure an indictment.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And when defense attorney Jim Griffin finally got Owen on
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the stand at trial and absolutely grilled him on this
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: massive discrepancy, Owen's excuse was just mind-boggling.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It was weak, yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: He claimed he had simply, quote, overlooked the negative human
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: tracing test.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Yes. He testified he didn't actually see Agent Zapata's report
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: until November of 2022.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to jump in here because that timeline
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: defies basic logic. November 2022 is 11 months after the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: lab confirmed there was no human blood. Right. It's months
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: after Murdoch was indicted based on the fake blood spatter story.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Think about how a grand jury works for a second.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It's like it's like a real estate developer pitching you
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: a multimillion dollar investment property.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: OK, I like this.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: They show you a glossy brochure claiming the building is
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: pristine and they demand your money right now. Right. But
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: they deliberately hide the 74 page structural engineering report sitting
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: in their briefcase. That says the foundation is actively collapsing.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And in a grand jury, you have no competing inspector
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to warn you. You just have to take the word
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: for it. So how does the lead investigator of the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: most scrutinized double homicide in state history just casually overlook
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the primary forensic report regarding the prime suspect's clothing?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: That's a good question. And if we connect this to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: the bigger picture, you are hitting on the exact psychological
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and institutional phenomena that defense attorneys look for. Right. There
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: are really two ways to interpret Owen's action here. The
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: charitable interpretation is tunnel vision or confirmation bias.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Meaning he only saw what he wanted to see.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Precisely. In high-stakes investigations, detectives often construct a theory of
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the crime early on. If they firmly believe Murdaugh is guilty,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: their brain subconsciously filters out information that contradicts that theory.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And it heavily weights information that supports it. So they
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: want blood to be there. Right? So they latch on
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: to an early preliminary opinion from an outside expert and
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: literally file away the definitive internal lab report without reading it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Because they assume they already know what it says.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They assume it confirms their bias.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: But the less charitable interpretation and the one the defense
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: is aggressively pushing in this motion is that it wasn't
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a mistake born of tunnel vision at all.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't an accident.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Right. They are saying it was a calculated suppression of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: exculpatory evidence.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And this is where the mechanics of a grand
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: jury become the real focal point of the crisis.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Well, most people conflate a grand jury with a trial jury,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: but they are entirely different beasts.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, completely different.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: In a grand jury, the room is sealed. It is
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: entirely secret. There is no judge presiding over the room.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Right, which is wild to think about.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: It is. And there is no defense attorney allowed in
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the room to cross-examine someone like David Owen. No one
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: is there to say, wait, What about the 74 cuttings?
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: So it's just the prosecutor and the witness.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The grand jurors rely 100% on the prosecutor and
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the lead investigator to accurately summarize the universe of facts.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: The state is the sole pipeline of reality in that room.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Which means if that pipeline is pumping fiction, the entire
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: indictment is built on a fraud.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: That's the argument.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It's not an independent decision by a jury of peers anymore.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It's just a rubber stamp on a fabricated narrative.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: And that leads to a very tantalizing footnote the defense
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: included in this motion.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. This part was crazy.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: It's a direct threat, really. They state in their filing
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: that they have obtained sworn deposition testimony identifying exactly who
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: leaked the fabricated blood spatter story to Fitz News in
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: the first place.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: And they are warning the state in this motion, if
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: you deny responsibility for this leak, we will attach this
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: transcript and make the name public.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: That is wild. It implies this wasn't just a clumsy
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: investigator misreading a file on his desk. It implies a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: coordinated institutional strategy to actively poison the public well before
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the courtroom doors even opened. Yeah.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: A deliberate media strategy.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: But as explosive as the white T-shirt is, Owen's willingness
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to ignore physical science is somewhat passive, right? He just
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: didn't read the report, allegedly.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: That's his defense, yeah.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: What he did with our next piece of evidence, Exhibit B,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: requires active premeditated fabrication.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, it does.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Let's look at how he weaponized the murder weapons themselves,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: because this takes us into the incredibly murky waters of
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: what police are legally allowed to do versus what they
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: are strictly forbidden from doing.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: This really raises an important question about the psychology of
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: interrogation versus the absolute sanctity of a courtroom oath. Right.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: But to grasp this, We first need to establish the
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: physical reality of the ballistics at the scene.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Let's do that. Because a huge hurdle in this case
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: has always been that the actual murder weapons were never recovered. Right.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: They just vanished.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: We just have the shell casings and the wounds. Maggie
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: was shot with a rifle utilizing 300 blackout ammunition.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And Paul was shot with a shotgun. And the forensic
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: loadout for that shotgun is very specific. The first shot
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: to the chest was buckshot. The fatal second shot to
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the head was steel duckshot. So you have a highly unusual,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: very specific combination of shells loaded into one weapon.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Right. So during the investigative phase, David Owen sits down
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: in an interrogation room with Alex Murdoch.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And Owen uses a very specific, highly calculated tactic here.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: He looks Murdoch in the eye and states, as a
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: matter of factual record, that the shotguns recovered from the
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: gun room at Moselle were loaded with the exact same
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: specific combination of shells as the mystery gun that killed Paul.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Matching buckshot, matching birdshot.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He tells him they found the matching loads.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Which was a total lie.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: It was a complete fabrication.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And Owen openly admitted at trial that he knew it
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: was false the exact moment it left his mouth.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: But here is the complex, often jarring reality of American jurisprudence.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: The Supreme Court of the United States explicitly allows police
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: officers to lie to suspects during interrogations. Wait. It is
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a legally permissible investigative tool, officially categorized as trickery.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Wait, hold on. I need to push back on this
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: system hard.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court says a state agent operating under the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: color of law can blatantly lie about matching ballistics to
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: a suspect in a locked room.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: How does that not immediately and consistently produce false confessions? Because,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I mean... If I'm sitting in an interrogation room for
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: 10 hours and a cop confidently tells me they have
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: my DNA on the murder weapon and it's totally legal
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: for them to fabricate that reality, that feels like psychological
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: torture designed to break innocent people.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: It is a fiercely debated topic in legal circles for
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: exactly the reasons you just outlined.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: The legal precedent actually stems from cases like Frazier v.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Cupp back in 1969. Okay, what was that? Basically, the
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court ruled that police deception doesn't automatically make a
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: confession involuntary. The utilitarian logic behind the ruling is that
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: guilty suspects often need a psychological push to confess.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Right, to break them down.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If a guilty person believes the police have irrefutable
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: matching ballistics, they might fold and tell the truth about
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: the crime. The courts have historically trusted that an innocent
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: person won't confess to a murder just because a cop
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: lies about a piece of evidence.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Which modern psychology and the Innocence Project have proven is
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: absolutely false.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: People confess to things they didn't do under pressure all
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The DNA exoneration era has thoroughly debunked the idea
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: that innocent people never falsely confess. But regardless of the
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: intense criticism, trickery remains a fully sanctioned tool in the
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: investigator's toolkit.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So when Owen lied to Murdaugh about the matching shotguns
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: in that room, he was technically operating within the legal
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: boundaries of his profession. He was executing a legally recognized tactic.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting, though.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Because he didn't leave the trickery in the interrogation room.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: David Owen took that exact same lie, put it in
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: his briefcase, and walked it down the hall into the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: grand jury room.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Our sources from Law and Crime detail that Owen begrudgingly
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: admitted at trial that his testimony to the grand jury,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: where he explicitly claimed that four shotguns in the Moselle
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: gun room were loaded with matching buckshot and birdshot, was
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: totally untrue.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: He took a tool designed for psychological pressure and tried
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: to use it as an evidentiary cornerstone to secure an indictment. Yeah.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: And that crosses a massive uncrossable line.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: But this is where I struggle with the institutional design here.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Well, if the legal system spends years training an investigator
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: that it is perfectly legal and even advantageous to aggressively
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: lie in room A when talking to a suspect.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: How on earth does that muscle memory not accidentally or intentionally...
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: bleed over when they walk into room B, the grand
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: jury room.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It's a very fair point.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: If you spend 20 years using deception as a daily
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: tool for justice, doesn't the line between a legal lie
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and an illegal lie just completely evaporate? You're basically asking
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: them to be a sociopath in the morning and a
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: saint in the afternoon.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: That is the exact philosophical crisis at the heart of
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: this motion to dismiss. You are highlighting the severe tension
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: between investigative tactics and prosecutorial integrity. Yeah. The justice system
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: demands rigid compartmentalization. An agent who lies to a suspect
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: is executing a strategy. An agent who lies to a
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: grand jury under oath is committing perjury.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Totally different things in the eyes of the law.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the defense perfectly encapsulated this tension in their filing.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: They wrote, an agent who lies to a suspect and
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: then tells the same lie to two grand juries has
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: not made an error. He has made a case.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: He has made a case that is a devastating phrase.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: They're arguing this wasn't a slip of the tongue or
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a guy who just got his notes mixed up. They
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: are arguing it was the structural, deliberate manufacturing of evidence
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: to secure an indictment at any cost.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are painting a picture of an investigator who
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: couldn't find the evidence he needed to match his theory,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: so he just willed it into existence under oath.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And that leads us directly to the judge's dilemma. With
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: these allegations meticulously documented, the phantom blood on the shirt,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: the imaginary matching ammunition, how does the justice system actually respond?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the immediate legal chessboard in the upcoming hearing.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it. So Judge McCaslin is presiding over
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: this retrial. Based on the legal analysis and our sources,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: she is not someone who suffers fools gladly.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: She is described as a thoroughly no-nonsense judge who is
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: intensely focused on keeping this mammoth case on track for
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that scheduled April 1st start date. She doesn't entertain frivolous delays.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: No, she wants this moving.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: So what are the actual odds she looks at this motion,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: looks at Owen's perjury, and hits the reset button on
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the trial of the century by tossing the indictment?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Well, from a purely statistical and historical standpoint, the likelihood
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: of the defense winning this specific motion to dismiss the
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: indictment is incredibly rare.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Even with all this?
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is an uphill battle on a vertical cliff.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Legally speaking, Judge McCaslin has a few well-worn avenues to
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: keep the indictment intact, despite David Owen's false testimony.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Okay. What are they?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: The most likely route she will take is applying the
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: doctrine of harmless error.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Harmless error.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. I need you to break that down.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: How does the justice system categorize lying to a grand
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: jury about murder weapons and blood evidence as harmless?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I know. It sounds like an oxymoron, right?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Completely.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: But harmless error is a massive load-bearing pillar in appellate
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: and trial law. The doctrine essentially states that a trial
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be fair.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: In the specific context of a grand jury proceedings. If
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: a judge finds that an investigator lied or presented false evidence,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: the judge doesn't automatically throw the whole case out. Right. Instead,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: they perform a sort of hypothetical surgery. They conceptually extract
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the false statements.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So they remove the lie about the T-shirt.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They remove the lie about the T-shirt. They remove
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the lie about the ammunition. And then the judge looks
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: at whatever evidence is left over.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: The remainder of the file.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The remainder. The judge asks... If the grand jury
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: had only heard this remaining truthful evidence, would they still
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: have had enough probable cause to indict?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: If the answer is yes, then the lie is deemed
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: a harmless error because it didn't ultimately change the outcome.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And given the mountain of other circumstantial evidence in the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Murdoch case, the financial desperation, the kennel video, the timeline,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Judge McCaslin will very likely rule that even without Owens' fabrications,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: there was more than enough evidence to indict.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to a phrase that gets tossed around
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: in legal circles constantly when talking about this exact threshold.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, I know the one you mean.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Explain the concept to me that you can get a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It is arguably the most famous and cynical idiom in
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: American criminal law.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Where does it come from?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: It was coined by Saul Watchler, a former chief judge
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: of New York back in the 1980s. And it perfectly
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: illustrates the incredibly low bar of evidence required at a
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: grand jury proceeding. At a standard criminal trial, you have
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the highest standard of proof in our system, beyond a
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: reasonable doubt. The state has to convince 12 people that
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: there is no other logical explanation than the defendant's guilt.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: It's a massive burden for the prosecution.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But a grand jury doesn't decide guilt. They only
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: decide if there is enough suspicion to even have a trial.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: That standard is just probable cause the state merely has
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: to show that a crime occurred and that it is
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: probable the defendant is the one who did it. That's it.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: It's a very low hurdle.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So it's much easier.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Much easier. Combine that low standard with the fact that
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: the prosecutor runs the room entirely unopposed. Remember, there's no
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: defense attorney there to object or point out flaws.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. It's just the state's narrative.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. the prosecutor has near total control over the room.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Hence the saying, a skilled prosecutor has so much power
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: in that secret room, they can convince a grand jury
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: to indict a ham sandwich for murder.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Wow. So let's apply that directly to this motion. Even
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: if Judge McCaslin looks at David Owen's testimony, gets furious
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and says, this is an egregious violation of the oath.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I am throwing out this indictment to send a message.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't actually end the case, right?
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Prosecutor Creighton Waters could theoretically walk out of her courtroom,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: walk down the hall into a brand new grand jury
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: room the very next morning, present the clean evidence without
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the lies, and re-indict Alex Murdaugh by lunchtime.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Unquestionably. Re-indictment would be practically guaranteed. And the defense team
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: knows this.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, then I have to ask, why do this?
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: If the defense attorneys, Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, and Phil Barber,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: if they know that the state can just hit the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: undo button and instantly refile the charges, why spend massive
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: amounts of time and billable hours crafting this elaborate motion?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Why go through the legal theater if the outcome is
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: essentially predetermined?
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Because it is a brilliant multi-lay trial strategy.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. The defense isn't playing checkers here. They are
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: playing three-dimensional chess. Okay.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: By filing this highly publicized motion detailing the specific Documented falsehoods.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: They aren't necessarily trying to end the trial right now.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: They are executing a massive public relations and psychological warfare
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: campaign against the state's star witness.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: They are poisoning the well against David Owen.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Poisoning it before opening statements even happen.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: They are essentially trying the lead detective in the press.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly right. They know the state is legally obligated to
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: call David Owen to the stand in the 2027 retrial.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: He's the lead investigator. The entire chain of evidence flows
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: through him.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: You can't have the trial without him.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: You cannot try this case without his testimony. But because
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: of this motion and the inevitable media frenzy surrounding it,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: when Owen takes the oath and sits in that witness
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: box next April, the jury pool will already be primed.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: They'll know his reputation.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. As attorney Lori Murray pointed out in our long
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: crime source material, the jury is going to be looking
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: at Owen, quote, with one eye open and one eye closed.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: They will be doubting every single word out of his mouth,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: from the moment he states his name for the record.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: The defense is systematically dismantling his credibility months in advance.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: It's setting him up to be the ultimate villain of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the state's case. And this strategy forces us to ask
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a much darker, systemic question.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Which is?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Is David Owen's behavior in the Murdaugh case just a
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: one-off mistake? Was he just an overworked guy, totally overwhelmed
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: by a chaotic, massive investigation with a thousand moving parts?
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Or... Is this part of a documented historical pattern of misconduct?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Because the sources introduce another case that absolutely blew my mind.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. To understand the true weight of the defense's attack strategy,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: we have to pull the lens back and look entirely
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: outside the Murdoch cinematic universe.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: We have to look at the Colucci case.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into Colucci. This is a completely unrelated murder case,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: but it might just be the torpedo that completely sinks
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the state's chances in the Murdoch retrial.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: That's highly relevant.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: In the Colucci case, David Owen was also the lead
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: investigator for SLED. And the facts here are chilling when
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you lay them next to what we just discussed about
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the T-shirt and the ammunition.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: The parallels are disturbing.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: In Colucci, the core of the defense's argument was that
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the victim had not been murdered at all, but had
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: actually committed suicide. And the crucial detail our sources highlight
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: is this. A couple of weeks after the death, the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: victim's mother had a direct conversation with with agent David Owen. Right.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: During that conversation, she explicitly told him that her daughter
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: had a history of discussing suicide.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Which, in a case where the primary defense is suicide,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: is a massive, case-altering, potentially exonerating piece of information.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: It's the whole ballgame. Yep. And what did lead investigator
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: David Owen do with this vital information from the victim's
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: own mother?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing. He buried it. He never turned this evidence
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: over to the defense team.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: And this introduces a legal concept that is arguably the
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: most powerful weapon a defense attorney can possess. Giglio material.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Let's break down Giglio. What exactly does that mean?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: It stems from a landmark 1972 Supreme Court case, Giglio
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: versus the United States. Okay. That ruling established that the
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: prosecution is constitutionally obligated to turn over any information or
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: material that could be used to impeach the credibility of
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: a prosecution witness.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Especially a law enforcement officer.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Especially them, yes. It's an extension of the famous Brady
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: rule regarding exculpatory evidence. Under Giglio, if a police officer
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: has a documented history of lying, of internal affairs violations
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: for dishonesty, or crucially of hiding evidence in past cases.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: The state has to tell the defense about it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: The state must disclose that history to the defense.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: So the defense can present it to the jury and say,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: why should you trust this cop's testimony today when he
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: hid evidence yesterday?
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Precisely. It allows the jury to fully weigh the officer's trustworthiness.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: When an officer is found to have committed a Giglio violation,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: they are often placed on what prosecutors informally call a
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Brady list.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And that's bad news for a cop.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, their career as a testifying investigator is essentially over.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Because every time they take the stand in any future case,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: the defense gets to bring up their past corruption. Withholding
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: exculpatory evidence, like a victim's mother saying her daughter was suicidal...
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: is the absolute cardinal sin of criminal investigation.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: It violates the core constitutional promise of a fair trial.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And the fallout in the Colucci case proves how severe
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: this violation was. When the presiding judge in that trial
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: found out Owen had withheld this statement, he didn't just
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: slap him on the wrist.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: No, he took drastic action.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: The judge threw out the murder charge entirely. He dismissed it. Now,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: it was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the state theoretically can refile.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: But it is phenomenally rare for a judge to toss
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a murder charge based solely on a state agent's misconduct.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It is a massive judicial rebuke.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about the severity of what Owen did.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: It establishes a clear documented pattern. It shows a mentality
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: that prioritizes securing a conviction over actually uncovering the truth.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But this is where my brain just short circuits regarding
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the institutional culture at SLED and the South Carolina Attorney
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: General's office.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's frustrating.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Think about the timeline. You have an elite state agent
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: who gets a literal murder case thrown out because he
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: hid evidence.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Then he gets on the stand in the Murdaugh trial
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and openly admits he told untrue things to a grand jury.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: He admits he didn't read the primary forensic lab report.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Why is this guy still employed? Our sources even point
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: out that David Owen received an award from the state
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: after the first Murdoch trial.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I know, it's wild.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: How on earth does an institution protect and even celebrate
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: someone who is demonstrably compromising their highest profile cases?
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: That institutional protection is exactly the rot the defense is
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: going to highlight to the jury. And the legal analysis
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: in our law and crime source draws a brilliant, direct
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: parallel to another infamous figure in the Murdoch saga.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Who is that?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Becky Hill, the former clerk of court. Oh, wow. The
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: jury tampering allegations.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: That's a perfect parallel.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: It really is. The analysts point out that the state aggressively,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: fiercely protected Becky Hill during the initial post-trial hearings regarding
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: her alleged jury tampering.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: They really defended her.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: They defended her, even when it was becoming increasingly obvious
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: that she had lied. And they only finally abandoned her
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: when the evidence became so overwhelming it was undeniable.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So why did they protect her for so long?
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Because they were desperate to protect their guilty verdict.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Ah, okay. The conviction is paramount.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The institutional mentality is often that the verdict is
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the only thing that matters. If acknowledging a corrupt clerk
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: or a lying investigator jeopardizes that monumental conviction, the institution's
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: first reflex is to circle the wagons. Wow. They protect
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: their own to protect the win. The expert and the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: source argues the state has been doing the exact same
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: thing with David Owen. They gave him an award and
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: kept him on the payroll because firing him for perjury
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: is would be an admission that the Murdaugh investigation was
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: fundamentally flawed.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: They protected the verdict by protecting the investigator.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the defense's ultimate
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: strategy in 2027? It seems like Harpootlian and Griffin are
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: engineering a very specific dynamic here.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: They are.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: They are setting David Owen up to be the Mark
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Furman of this retrial.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: That's a great comparison.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: For those who remember the O.J. Simpson trial in the 90s,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Mark Furman was the lead LAPD detective who found the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: bloody glove. Right. But his own compromised credibility, his documented racism,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and his perjury on the stand became the central pillar
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: of the defense's entire case.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they flipped the script.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: OJ's lawyers didn't really have to prove OJ was innocent.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: They just had to prove the cop finding the evidence
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: was corrupt and capable of planting it.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: The defense here doesn't need to prove Alex Murdaugh is
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a saint. They just need the jury to believe the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: lead detective is a liar. The state's star investigator literally
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: becomes the defense's star witness.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: It is a devastatingly effective trial strategy when you have
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the actual receipts to back it up.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And they have them.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. With the dismissed Colucci case and the contradictory
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: grand jury transcripts, the defense has the receipts in spades.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So let's synthesize all these moving parts. We've got phantom blood, trickery,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: grand jury perjury, and adultery. history of hiding evidence.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: It's a lot. It is.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Let's look at what this collision course actually means for
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the spring 2027 retrial. What does the landscape look like
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: for both sides, starting with the prosecution?
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Well, the state is walking into this retrial with a severe,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: noticeable limp. As our sources point out, they are structurally
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: stuck with the exact same case they had last time,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: but they might have significantly less ammunition to present to
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: the jury.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Right, because of the financial crimes.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: In the first trial, Judge Clifton Newman allowed a massive
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: weeks-long presentation of Murdaugh's financial misdeeds, the millions of dollars
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: he stole from his own clients.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: It was a huge part of the trial.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: The state used that to establish his motive. They painted
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a picture of a desperate man whose entire fraudulent life
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: was collapsing around him, so he murdered his family to
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: buy time and sympathy. Right. But legal analysts suggest the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: new judge, Judge McCaslin, might severely restrict or entirely block
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that financial evidence from coming in this time around.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Which absolutely guts the state's narrative engine.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Completely.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: If they can't show the jury the financial collapse, they
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: struggle to answer the fundamental question. Why would a wealthy,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: successful lawyer suddenly slaughter his wife and son?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Without the financial motive, the crime seems inexplicable.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: It really does. And compounded with that narrative loss, they
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: have the heavy, unavoidable burden of putting David Owen on
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the stand.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Right, their star witness.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Calling him to testify is essentially handing the defense a
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: loaded shotgun. Every time Owen speaks, every time he tries
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: to introduce a piece of evidence, the defense will use
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: the white t-shirt, the mismatched ammunition... and the Kuluchi-Gliglio material
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: to suggest he is simply manufacturing reality again.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So the state is weakened and carrying heavy baggage. On
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the flip side, let's look at the defense's new arsenal,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: because they are coming into 2027 highly armed.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: First, they have the ultimate benefit of hindsight. A retrial
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: is a rare gift for a defense attorney because they
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: already know exactly what the state's playbook looks like.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: They've seen all the cards.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Second, they have this newly solidified trove of impeachment
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: material on Owen.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And third, the sources mentioned they have new forensic arguments
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: they plan to deploy. For example, there was unidentified DNA
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: found under Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails that the defense feels wasn't
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: fully explored or contextualized in a way that benefited them
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: during the chaos of the first trial.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: They also have a critical strategic imperative to change their tone.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: The analysts in the source material astutely note that the
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: defense team needs to be much more personable this time around.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: In the first trial, Dick Harpootlian's aggressive, sometimes condescending approach
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: often fell flat with the jury.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: It rubbed in the wrong way.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: It did. It felt disconnected. They need to connect with
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: the jurors on a human level if they want them
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: to really buy into this narrative of state corruption.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: OK, I hear all of that. The defense has massive advantages.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: They have a corrupt cop. They have hindsight. But I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: have to ask the ultimate question.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? Can they actually win?
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Because there is a massive, unshakable hurdle that remains for
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Alex Murdoch, no matter how many times David Owen lied
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: or how much evidence he hid.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I know exactly what you're going to say.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: The kennel video.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Yes. The inescapable, devastating truth of the kennel video.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: It's huge.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: For anyone who doesn't recall the crux of the first trial,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Alex Murdoch adamantly, repeatedly lied to investigators for over a year.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: He looked David Owen in the eye and claimed he
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: was nowhere near the dog kennels where Maggie and Paul
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: were murdered that night.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: He swore he was asleep at the main house. He
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: built his entire alibi on that claim.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Right. Until the state managed to crack the passcode on
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Paul Murdaugh's cell phone.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: That was the turning point.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And on that phone, they found a video taken just
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: moments before the murders occurred. And clear as day, captured
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: in the background audio of that video at the kennels,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: is the voice of Alex Murdaugh.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: It definitively proved he was there, at the scene, right
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: when the slaughter happened. and that he had looked the
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: police in the eye and lied about it repeatedly.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: So this is the ultimate paradox of this case. When
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you have a trial where the defense can successfully, demonstrably
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: prove that the lead investigator lied to the grand jury
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to build the case, but the state can successfully, demonstrably
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: prove that the defendant lied about his alibi at the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: exact scene of the brutal crime, how on earth does
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: a jury weigh a lying cop against a lying defendant?
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: That is the psychological crux of the 2027 retrial.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: It's a tough call.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: It is. A jury might absolutely abhor a corrupt investigator.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: They might hate the state for hiding evidence in the past.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: But they also have a deeply visceral, emotional reaction to
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: a husband and father lying about being present in the
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: exact moment his family was slaughtered.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hard to get past.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: The defense's only hope is that they can introduce enough structural,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: reasonable doubt through Owen's misconduct that the jury feels they
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: simply cannot legally trust the state's foundation. even if they
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: personally suspect in their gut that Murdaugh is guilty.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: They are asking the jury to acquit on principle.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. To punish the state's corruption.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Which is a monumental gamble. Juries generally want to punish
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: murderers more than they want to punish bad paperwork or perjury.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: And that brings up the absolute wild card of this
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: whole scenario. Will Alex Murdaugh testify again?
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: That is the million-dollar question.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Because he has this massive ego. He is a guy
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: who spent his entire adult life as a plaintiff's attorney,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: charming juries across the South Carolina Lowcountry, winning massive settlements.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: He thinks he can talk his way out of anything.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: He is fundamentally used to talking his way out of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: tight spots.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: But his ego wildly miscalculated during the first trial. His
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: performance on the stand was widely considered a catastrophic disaster.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: It was so hard to watch.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: He thought he could charm them, but he just came
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: off as manipulative. The long crime source material specifically references
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: his physical demeanor. They talk about the bodily fluids coming
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: out of his face.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, God, yeah.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: It was this messy, highly theatrical, completely unconvincing crying on
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: the stand that just did not pull well with the
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: jury at all. It repelled them.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Right. The analyst joked he needs to at least have
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: a giant box of tissues handy if he insists on
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: taking the stand again.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it's good advice.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: But ego often overrides smart legal strategy. If he demands
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to take the stand against his lawyer's advice, it's going
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to be the ultimate clash of personalities in that room.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: It's going to be chaotic.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: You are going to have defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, who
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: is incredibly theatrical, aggressive, and unpredictable, going head-to-head with state
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: prosecutor Creighton Waters, who is equally intense, dogged, and clearly
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: despises Murdaugh.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: And right in the middle of this legal tempest would
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: be Judge McCaslin.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: The no-nonsense judge.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: The analysts paint this vivid, almost comical picture of her
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: acting like An exhausted mother driving a minivan.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I love that comparison.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Constantly threatening to stop this car if the attorneys in
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the backseat can't control their tempers and their egos. It
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: is going to be absolute legal fireworks.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: It really is. So to summarize this incredibly wild journey
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: we've been on today, we started with a defense motion
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: to dismiss an indictment based on a phantom blood spatter
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: report that a lead investigator somehow miraculously overlooked for 11
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: months while securing murder charges.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: We move to the revelation that this exact same investigator
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: knowingly presented false information about matching shotgun ammunition to a
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: grand jury, a lie birthed from the legally sanctioned interrogation
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: tactic of trickery. Right. We explored the Giglio doctrine and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: how this behavior isn't an anomaly, but part of a
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: documented pattern of withholding exculpatory evidence, protected by an institutional
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: win-at-all-costs mentality that shields its own.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And it all leads up to a spring 2027 retrial
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: where both the state and the defense are literally fighting
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: for their baseline credibility before a jury even hears opening statements.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: It is a profound real-time stress test of the American
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: justice system. It asks whether the system is strong enough
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: to actually police itself.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It absolutely is. And that leaves me with a final
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: provocative thought for everyone to mull over.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: We spent a lot of time today talking about how
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court explicitly allows police officers to use trickery
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and deception as a tool to extract the truth from
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: suspects in an interrogation room.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: It is a sanctioned weapon in the pursuit of justice.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: But think about the long-term psychological impact of that precedent.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: By legally authorizing deception as a standard operating procedure for
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: our investigators, does the system inevitably create a culture where
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the line between a legal lie to a suspect is
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and an illegal lie to a grand jury becomes dangerously,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: permanently blurred.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: That's a scary thought.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: What happens to our justice system when the authorized tools
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: designed for finding the truth become the exact tools used
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: to obscure it? Wow. Thank you so much for joining
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: us on this deep dive. Keep questioning the narratives you
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: are handed, and we will see you next time.