Murdaugh murder trial juror speaks out for the first time
WALTERBORO, S.C. (WTOC) - For the first time, we are hearing from one of the jurors who convicted Alex Murdaugh of murder.
The one-on-one interview comes just two days after the convicted murderer’s legal team sent an appeal of his conviction to South Carolina’s Supreme Court.
It is the latest attempt at a new trial for the former attorney found guilty of killing his wife and son.
You’ll , Murdaugh was convicted of those murders on March 2, 2023, and is serving two life sentences for the crimes.
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The appeal alleges that Becky Hill, who was then Colleton County clerk of the court, denied Murdaugh a fair trial by swaying jurors to find him guilty with secret advocacy for a guilty verdict in the jury room.
It references a hearing last January where multiple jurors testified that Hill told them to watch Murdaugh’s actions and body language. One juror in particular stated that Hill’s comments affected her verdict because Hill made it seem like he was already guilty.
The appeal comes after the state’s highest court decided in August to allow a judge to decide if Murdaugh should be granted a new murder trial over a claim of jury tampering.
We sat down with the woman we have previously only known as juror 864 on Thursday. Her real name is Amie Williams.She says convicting Alex Murdaugh of murder is a decision she has been confident in, since she came to it.
The trial captured the nation’s attention, but the people who focused on it more than anyone were the 12 jurors who decided his fate.
In referencing Murdaugh taking the witness stand in his own defense, Williams said, “he’s a bad actor, because he tried just a little too hard.”
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During that testimony he changed his alibi and itted to being at the scene of the crime, only after a Snapchat video placed him there. The video was taken by his son Paul down at the family’s dog kennels.
It was taken just minutes before he was murdered. Alex’s voice can be heard in the background and he itted to being there once on the stand after previously saying he was not there.
“When I saw the Snapchat video, I was like, wow so you lied. You lied about the most important piece,” said Williams.
She also tells me she believes the prosecution overcame not having a murder weapon, by proving the guns used in the killings were from the family’s Moselle home. With that and the lying, she was sure of her verdict before deliberations, but says that wasn’t the case for all of her peers. Williams revealed that initially the jury was not fully in agreement.
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“Madam foreperson called for a vote, no one knew who voted what, we just wrote down on a piece of paper Y or N. It was nine guilty, two not guilty and one not sure.”
From there she says they went back through any evidence folks had questions about, and only a few hours later the next vote was unanimous.
They believed beyond a reasonable doubt Murdaugh was a murderer.
Since then, his legal team has accused former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill of tampering with the jury and centered their efforts for a new trial around that accusation.
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Does Williams feel the jury was tampered with?
Her response: “I don’t see where it was or where we were. I didn’t see where anything was said or done to make me believe that he was guilty or not guilty.”
Hill is in the middle of a legal fight of her own since those tampering allegations, and stepped away from her elected position before the 2024 election.
Meanwhile, as Murdaugh’s appeal to the Supreme Court moves forward, Williams tells me she felt like the murders were personal. She believes they were an act of anger, committed by a man in a perfect storm of an unraveling life.
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