Isaac SchorrMay 13th, 2026, 10:51 am

Alex Murdaugh, the prominent former South Carolina attorney who had been found guilty of murdering his son Paul and wife Maggie, had his convictions thrown out on in what legal commentator Areva Martin described as an “extraordinary” turn of events on Tuesday.

After CNN anchor Pamela Brown reported that “the murder convictions of Alex Murdaugh have been overturned and a judge ordered a new trial saying the first one was marred by the quote, ‘improper influence of the county clerk'” on Tuesday morning, Wolf Blitzer asked Martin, “How significant is this, and how often does this happen?”

Martin replied:

Wow, this is a stunning turn of events, Wolf. This doesn’t happen very often where you see a unanimous, five justice Supreme Court — and this is the Supreme Court of South Carolina — vacating both murder convictions and life sentences. Essentially, the court found that Murdoch’s Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury was egregiously violated by this court clerk. Her name is Becky Hill. We remember that she made comments, or it was reported that she made comments to jurors about his testimony midway through the trial. According to this opinion, Becky Hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice.

This is a pretty extraordinary, Wolf.

“So what happens now?” followed up Blitzer.

“Well, it’s not as if he’s walking out of jail or prison, I should say. He still remains incarcerated on state — And remember, there were federal financial crime convictions that he pled guilty to — The state has to decide whether to retry him on the murder, the charges of murder, the current attorney general and all four candidates to replace him as attorney general have already said that they would retry them. So probably what we will see is a series of motions filed by his attorneys and a new trial date set,” answered Martin.

Watch above via CNN.

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