‘At a standstill;’ Harpootlian urges judge to help speed up Murdaugh retrial discovery

 (WCIV) — Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorney Dick Harpootlian has written to presiding Judge Debra McCaslin to lament prosecutors’ lack of response to his team’s discovery motions and ask the court to help move things along. Harpootlian said in the letter that without the evidence his team has requested, “the defense is at a standstill” as it works to prepare for April 2027’s looming retrial.

The letter, filed Thursday in Colleton County, states that prosecutors have produced “nothing” to the defense in preparation for the retrial except DNA extracts and reserve samples collected from the grisly scene where Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were shot and killed in 2021.

Harpootlian went on to list five instances where the defense has requested specific items from the State in writing:

• A Sept. 11 request for answers to six questions about the .300 Blackout bullet casings recovered from the scene of the crime
• A Sept. 15 request for laser-scan data to digitally reconstruct the scene with
• A Sept. 21 request for the raw extraction files, keychain files, and extraction logs for cell phones seized during the initial investigation
• A Sept. 23 request for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) laboratory case narrative after Jan. 6, 2023, a specific SLED email from after Jan. 10, 2023, jail calls made by Curtis “Eddie” Smith, an alleged Murdaugh co-conspirator who remains on house arrest, after Jan. 18, 2023, and photographs from firearms examination conducted during the investigation
• A Sept. 30 request for sixteen further items, including interviews and statements he said “do not appear in the file,” swabs collected at the scene that were not analyzed, hair that was reportedly observed on Maggie Murdaugh’s hands, the footwear impression from footprints in the feed room, and the cellular analysis working file.

Harpootlian stated that with each request the defense asked for responses by a specific date, but the State has not met those deadlines, save a letter responding to the Sept. 11 request. Without the items they have requested, the defense, Harpootlian argues, is “at a standstill.”

“The State’s silence toward the defense…leaves the defense to conclude that the State does not intend to produce anything voluntarily,” Harpootlian wrote.

In order to prevent the defense from requesting a continuance and further delaying the April 2027 retrial, he asked Judge McCaslin to direct prosecutors to respond to the motions to compel filed on Sept. 18, 28, and 29 and the requests made on Sept. 15, 21, 23, and 30, consider ruling on the motions to compel whether or not the State files responses, and consider hearing matters of discovery by video conference or “more frequent in-person hearings” instead of waiting to address them in the next scheduled pretrial hearing. For the latter, if the judge takes him up on it Harpootlian said Murdaugh will waive his presence at hearings confined to discovery matters in order to allow scheduling without consideration for arranging his transport from prison.