Disgraced former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh won a major legal victory last week after the South Carolina Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal for a new murder trial.
But while he awaits the hearing, which bypasses a lengthy appeals process and could overturn his double life sentences, Murdaugh is playing chess “all the time” and working as a guard’s assistant in a protective unit at a state prison, his attorney and state records show.
“He said there are some really good chess players in there,” defense attorney Jim Griffin told NBC News on Thursday. “Alex is a nice guy. I’m sure he’s made friends.”
The strictly indoor extracurricular activities, however, only occur during the eight hours Murdaugh spends outside his cell in the less than 100-person unit that is separated from the prison’s general population. From Friday through Monday, he is “completely confined to his cell with no freedom of movement,” Griffin added.
The new details about how Murdaugh is spending his time behind bars come amid reports that the 56-year-old is “living it up” in state prison, where he has been housed since his conviction last year for the fatal shooting of his wife Maggie and their son Paul on the family’s hunting estate. He also faces dozens of state and federal charges for allegedly bilking his former law firm and clients out of millions over more than a decade.
During a podcast panel on Wednesday, Aimee Zmroczek, the attorney representing Murdaugh’s co-defendant Curtis Eddie Smith, claimed that Murdaugh has fully “adjusted” to prison and is “enjoying it” while running a side business. In text messages to NBC News, Zmroczek said she had heard the claims from “several inmates” who “have been involved in his cases,” but declined to provide more information.
“I was actually in jail yesterday. … Let me tell you, he runs that place,” Zmroczek said on the podcast. “He has a side gambling system.”
However, Griffin and the South Carolina Department of Corrections immediately denied Zmroczek’s bold claims.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Griffin said, noting that Murdaugh isn’t even in the prison Zmrocezek mentioned in the podcast, though he declined to name the exact facility out of fear for his client’s safety and privacy. “The claim that he’s running a gambling ring is laughable because his contact is limited. They don’t even have cards there, as far as I know.”
“The Murdaugh economy is going strong. It’s just noise, it doesn’t matter,” he added.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said Murdaugh remains in protective custody at a maximum-security prison and only interacts with people who live or work in his unit. She called Zmroczek’s claims “not true” and added that there is no record of the attorney visiting Murdaugh’s “prison on Tuesdays or any day in the past two years.”
“The attorney described Murdaugh’s behavior, but she has not seen him or visited the prison where he has been since he was incarcerated,” Shain said.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections report on Murdaugh shows that he has not been disciplined since August of last year, when he was banned from using the phone for 30 days after abusing his privileges. That same month, he also lost his cafeteria privileges after “unauthorized use” of another inmate’s PIN. The prison report also shows that Murdaugh started a new job as a correctional officer’s assistant on August 14, a position he had held twice before.
“Good for him,” said Griffin, who admitted he was not aware of the new work assignment even though he had spoken to Murdaugh on Friday and had weekly phone conversations.
Eric Bland, who represents several of Murdaugh’s victims and jurors in his murder trial, believes that while Zmroczek’s comments are “a bit of an embellishment,” he wouldn’t be surprised by any shady behavior under the noses of prison guards.
“There’s clearly an underground business going on in prison, people get creative and they’re a lot more creative inside than they are outside. The prison system doesn’t condone a gambling operation, but there’s a lot of stuff going on,” Bland said. “But don’t forget it’s an extremely regulated, clock-driven lifestyle and you don’t get to make your own decisions. He’s also in a maximum-security prison and his interactions with people are extremely limited.”
And while Zmroczek’s comments paint a life behind bars that sounds like a scene from “Goodfellas,” it doesn’t seem entirely impossible given the realities of prison and smart inmates. Murdaugh’s attorney, however, isn’t worried and is focusing on their appellant cases.
Last week, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear Murdaugh’s state appeal for a new murder trial based on allegations that a court clerk manipulated the jury that convicted him. Defense attorneys allege that Colleton County District Court Clerk Becky Hill told the 12-person jury not to believe Murdaugh’s testimony and other evidence and pressured them for a quick guilty verdict.
“The legal principle of primary concern is whether it is presumptively prejudicial to a state official to secretly plead guilty through ex parte contacts with jurors during the trial, or whether a defendant, having proved that the contacts occurred, must also somehow prove that the verdict would have been different in a hypothetical trial in which the secret pleas did not occur,” his lawyers argued in a July filing.
Although no date has been set, the state Supreme Court hearing could overturn a judge’s January decision that denied Murdaugh’s first bid for a new trial. The decision, by former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, came after a hearing on whether Hill’s comments during the trial influenced the jury. Toal ruled that while Hill was “drawn to the siren song of celebrity” even before the trial, the jury was not in jeopardy. Hill has denied the allegations.
“We really look forward to arguing our case before the Supreme Court,” Griffin said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
