Alex Murdaugh is expected to get a sentence for over 2 dozen financial offenses

Alex Murdaugh is expected to get a sentence for over two dozen financial offenses.

 

Following his guilty plea last year, Alex Murdaugh, a 55-year-old former attorney who is already serving two life terms for the killings of his wife and son, is expected to be sentenced by a federal judge on Monday for almost two dozen financial crimes.

Prosecutors claim in a petition filed last week that Murdaugh failed a polygraph exam, breaking the conditions of a plea deal that demanded honesty. This could complicate what should have been an easy sentencing hearing. During Monday’s sentence, Murdaugh refuted the assertion, and his counsel requested that the court reject the government’s petition.

Murdaugh entered a guilty plea to 22 federal charges in September of last year, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Federal prosecutors had accused Murdaugh of stealing millions of dollars in settlement funds from his namesake law firm and personal injury clients, which he then used for his own gain.

According to a prior statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, the maximum penalty for each crime is 20 or 30 years. Prosecutors suggested last week that Murdaugh get a jail term ranging from 17.5 to almost 22 years.

The now-disbarred lawyer was previously found guilty of almost two dozen counts, including money laundering, breach of trust, conspiracy, forgery, and tax evasion, and was given a 27-year term in state court for identical offenses.

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A year ago, he was found guilty of the June 2021 murders of his wife Maggie, and son Paul, 22, which state prosecutors claimed were a desperate attempt to divert attention from and postpone inquiries into his collapsing financial schemes. He was also given consecutive life sentences for these crimes.

Although he maintains his innocence of the killings, Murdaugh has acknowledged financial crimes, claiming he was feeding a years-long opiate addiction.

Depending on whether a federal court finds that Murdaugh violated his plea deal by failing a polygraph test, as the prosecution claimed, the federal sentence that was issued on Monday may or may not be served concurrently with his state sentence.

According to court documents, federal prosecutors recommended that Murdaugh serve his sentence concurrently with the sentence given in South Carolina in exchange for his guilty plea.

However, prosecutors requested that the judge release the government from the terms of the plea agreement, absolving them of the need to suggest a concurrent sentence in light of the polygraph test’s failure.

Prosecutors also filed a move to suppress the polygraph exam report and four FBI reports pertaining to Murdaugh’s interviews from the previous year. They claimed that all of these documents had to do with an ongoing grand jury investigation and accusations of wrongdoing by third parties.

As part of his plea agreement, Murdaugh consented to a polygraph test, which specifically called on him to be “fully truthful and forthright” while authorities attempted to recoup the millions of dollars he defrauded from his victims.

Although the details of the questioning and Murdaugh’s response remain undisclosed, the government’s document states that the investigation focused “on issues related to hidden assets and the involvement of another attorney in Murdaugh’s criminal conduct.” However, the government asserts that the agreement is unlawful since the results of a two-part polygraph exam in October 2023 showed deceit.

According to their own sentencing brief from Thursday, Murdaugh’s attorneys have requested that the court either refuse or postpone making a decision that would hold their client in violation of the plea deal until the polygraphs are given to him.

They said that the polygraph examiner had manipulated the findings by “odd conduct,” rendering the plea deal null and unenforceable.

According to their brief, this includes “‘secretly’ confiding” to Murdaugh that he had recently administered a polygraph to Joran Van der Sloot, who admitted last year to killing Natalee Holloway over two decades ago, and purportedly communicating his conviction that Murdaugh is innocent of the killings of his wife and kid.

In the end, Murdaugh’s lawyers argue that there are serious questions about whether the government behaved in good faith given the actions of both the government before and after the polygraph exam.

The government’s move to seal the evidence was also rejected by Murdaugh’s lawyers, who said the prosecution had not sufficiently demonstrated why a “less drastic” measure, such as redactions, would not be acceptable.

Judge Richard M. Gergel of the US District Court for the District of Columbia directed prosecutors to provide a redacted copy of the records on Friday, noting that the court recognized the government’s desire to keep them confidential. The judge said that a “detailed explanation” to support the sealing may jeopardize the current probe.

Gergel did, however, also suggest that Monday’s sentence may take place without revealing any information from the papers the government wishes to remain confidential.

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