Book Review: The Devil at His Elbow – North Carolina Criminal Law

I work within the subject of felony legislation and have penchant for Southern Gothic (and in addition I’m human) so after all I adopted Alex Murdaugh’s 2023 trial for the homicide of his spouse and son. The story was sensational, and the information spooled out like an old-school tv mini-series, weaving a story wherein a small-town southern household dynasty was strangled by the privilege that when helped it flourish. However in case you watched the new-school Netflix collection, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, I’m not telling you something you don’t already know.

What I’m right here to inform you about is The Satan at His Elbow, a non-fiction work by Valerie Bauerlien, which chronicles the Murdaugh household by way of 5 generations, the intertwined historical past of Hampton County, South Carolina, the place they lived, and the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of Alex Murdaugh for homicide and quite a few monetary crimes. Bauerlien, a reporter for the Wall Road Journal, attended and reported on each the homicide trial and the courtroom proceedings within the fraud instances, and her recounting of these issues, together with the investigation and the attorneys’ trial techniques, is a riveting learn. However the side of the work that I discovered most compelling–certainly haunting–was the institutionalized habits that affronted my notions about justice and honest play, the function of the courts because the protector of particular person rights, and the inviolate proper to trial by jury. Bauerlien uncovered the style wherein generations of Murdaugh males co-opted their public positions and exploited the justice system to serve their very own ends. Till Alex’s downfall in 2023, this habits had gone unchecked for practically a century.

4 generations of Murdaugh males earlier than Alex had been solicitor (in different phrases, the chief prosecutor) for the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, a swath of territory that encompasses 4 counties located to the south of Charleston, South Carolina: Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper Counties. As Bauerlien put it, the solicitor was “the chief lawman for 100 miles.” (Bauerlien, at 41). Put extra plainly, “the solicitor was the legislation.” Id.

Alex’s great-grandfather, Randolph Murdaugh Sr. was the primary chief lawman, then his grandfather, Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh Jr., then his father, Randolph Murdaugh III. Alex himself turned down the prospect to serve on this highly effective public place that additionally was part-time, allowing the workplace holder to concurrently preserve a personal apply within the district. Bauerlien posits that Alex’s dependancy to opioids would have made that tough as “[r]ealistically, there was no means he may prosecute each accused felony within the Fourteenth Circuit, whereas secretly committing felonies of his personal.” Id. at 20. But she reviews that Alex’s predecessors didn’t deal with the function as requiring its occupant to himself keep inside the bounds of the legislation or morality. She recounts Randolph Sr.’s document of each ignoring and actively taking part in jury tampering.

Subsequent within the line of succession was Buster who, whereas serving as solicitor, was hauled earlier than the South Carolina State Bar on allegations that he misappropriated funds. Whereas these the costs finally have been dismissed, he was later tried in federal courtroom for his alleged function in operating the state’s largest bootleg ring. In that case, Buster used his twin function as a solicitor and protection lawyer to defend himself, testifying that he paid cash to the native sheriff not for verify kiting however as an alternative for investigations carried on in a civil case. The jury returned responsible verdicts towards fifteen of Buster’s co-defendants, however they Buster not responsible. Not lengthy after, the Justice Division reported that witnesses had been intimidated and bribed. Nonetheless, Buster remained as solicitor for one more thirty years, stepping down solely after the South Carolina legislature enacted a compulsory retirement age of 72.

Randolph III was appointed in 1986 to finish his father’s time period. Randolph III prosecuted drug instances as solicitor, after which, in his personal capability, defended alleged drug smugglers in federal courtroom. Bauerlien reviews that Randolph III was rumored to have adopted his father’s instance by working with the drug runners and accepting bribes to look the opposite means. She additionally recounts the potential boat scandal that Randolph III confronted in 1998. A ship his workplace had seized in a drug bust and which he saved at his personal seaside compound (dubbed Murdaugh Island) crashed throughout a celebration hosted by his son John Marvin. A ship passenger was critically injured within the crash. In contrast to the deadly boat wreck by Alex’s son, Paul, in 2019 that led to felony expenses towards Paul and a lawsuit towards Alex Murdaugh, the 1998 investigation went nowhere.

Bauerlien properties in on the hypocrisy inherent within the Murdaughs’ relationship to their neighborhood. By way of their work as private harm attorneys, they created “‘a judicial hellhole’” the place native jurors groomed by the household’s obvious beneficence returned verdicts in private harm instances that have been ten instances bigger than have been typical in different elements of the state. Id. at 97. That surroundings discouraged companies from opening in the neighborhood and inhibited docs from opening medical practices, which in flip disadvantaged folks of jobs and made it costlier to reside. The upshot was that the Murdaughs thrived “because the city round them sank.” Id. at 98.

Just a few classes emerge from the story. First is the essential want inside the authorized career for peer-governance, reporting, and formalized monetary evaluation and auditing. Alex was a companion in a multi-lawyer powerhouse agency staffed by professionals, together with a chief monetary officer. But by some means his monetary misdeeds didn’t come to the agency’s consideration nor apparently to the eye of every other non-colluding lawyer with an obligation to report till greater than a decade after they started. By that point, dozens of shoppers had been defrauded. The lesson was not misplaced on the South Carolina State Trial Attorneys Affiliation, a gaggle based by Alex’s grandfather and of which Alex was elected president in 2015. After Alex was convicted, the affiliation excised his title from the roll of distinguished previous presidents and featured him as an object lesson throughout a keynote session on authorized ethics.

Second is that allowing a prosecutor to concurrently interact within the personal apply of legislation cultivates fertile floor for potential conflicts of curiosity and abuse of energy. In North Carolina, the district legal professional and assistant district legal professional are prohibited from participating within the personal apply of legislation (see G.S. 7A-61, -63), however state legislation does permit a district legal professional to delegate his or her prosecutorial perform to a personal legal professional. In South Carolina’s Fourteenth Judicial Circuit there additionally seems to have been some blurring of the traces between the roles of the prosecutor and legislation enforcement. To make certain, these features typically are complementary and interdependent. However they don’t seem to be the identical; the prosecutor will not be additionally the investigator or a part of the power. Alex’s brandishing of his grandfather’s solicitor’s badge to curry favor with legislation enforcement officers and deference from others is a palpable instance; Bauerlien recounts how Alex clipped the badge, which he usually displayed on the console of his Suburban, to the surface of his pants the place it was clearly seen earlier than he walked into the Beaufort Memorial Hospital following his son Paul’s drunken boat crash. In fact, he was not there within the capability of prosecutor or legislation enforcement officer, however as mum or dad.

In reality, the conflicts of curiosity on this a part of South Carolina’s Lowcountry have been so rife that line-blurring might not have been chief amongst them. Bauerlien reviews that assist from the Murdaugh household was required to acquire elected workplace within the district. Almost everybody knew the Murdaughs and lots of owed their positions to the household’s largesse. Because of these dynamics, the processing of the homicide scene (just like the scene of Paul’s boat crash three years earlier) was compromised from the get-go. An out-of-jurisdiction police chief who had been acquitted on corruption expenses in a trial the place Randolph III and Alex sat behind him within the entrance row of the courtroom appeared on the scene; the hearth battalion chief refused to adjust to a request from legislation enforcement officers to go away the our bodies uncovered to protect proof; and the coroner didn’t comply with commonplace procedures out of respect for the victims. When Agent David Owen from the South Carolina Regulation Enforcement Division arrived just a few hours after the homicide, the Colleton County Sheriff was briefing certainly one of Alex’s legislation companions.

However what to do about such conflicts?  Like North Carolina, South Carolina has a code {of professional} conduct that requires a lawyer to comply with the legislation and never use its provisions to harass or intimidate others. Ethics codes become a flimsy protect towards rampant corruption, significantly when the offending lawyer is a part of a household so highly effective that they have been known as “the Lowcountry Mafia.” Id. at 232. Even so, some South Carolina authorized and legislation enforcement professionals refused to cow. They included Mark Tinsley, the legal professional who represented the household of Mallory Seaside, the lady who was killed in 2019 when Paul crashed the boat wherein she was a passenger. Tinsley doggedly pursued Alex in a private harm swimsuit, insisted that investigators with conflicts of curiosity be faraway from the boat wreck investigation, and pushed the trial courtroom to order Alex to make a full accounting of his belongings. A courtroom listening to within the case was scheduled for Thursday, June 10. Alex murdered his spouse and son on Monday, June 7, and the lawsuit was subsequently dismissed.

Whereas Tinsley was himself a profitable private harm lawyer who stood to realize a big payment from a profitable swimsuit towards Alex, different professionals who had no such monetary incentives likewise stood as much as the Murdaughs’ energy. They embrace Agent Owen, the lead investigator on the case, who pursued the case however his perception that if Alex was acquitted, the Murdaughs would sue him and make his life “a residing hell.” Id. at 344. Owen’s ailing mom was hospitalized on the primary day of trial testimony and died the day earlier than Owen spent 5 hours on the witness stand testifying for the State. One other is lead prosecutor Creighton Waters, a public servant who earned one-tenth of Alex’s annual wage. Like Agent Owen, Waters thought the “blowback could be catastrophic” if he misplaced; but he was undeterred by that danger. Id. at 287.  Bauerlien writes that “[t]he vary and depth of Alex’s transgressions” have been an insult to Waters, “who noticed Alex’s depravity as an affront to the credibility of the authorized career.” Id.

The third level is much less of a lesson and extra of a reminder in regards to the risks of unchecked energy. True, Alex finally was checked, however lengthy after large and irreparable injury was completed. And his being held accountable in any respect was removed from a foregone conclusion on the inception of the felony trial. Techniques wherein a small circle of individuals decide the fortunes of all these round them are breeding grounds for corruption. For those who suppose such situations exist solely in a bygone period, the Murdaugh story is a phrase to the smart about their endurance.

All classes apart, Bauerlien masterfully tells a multi-generational story that rises, falls, and rises once more on one of the best and worst of the human situation: ambition and indolence, venality and morality, self-indulgence and self-restraint, loyalty and betrayal, honesty and deceit, and love and hate. Finally, as Bauerlien’s editor instructed her when she requested early on in regards to the Wall Road Journal’s angle: “[S]ometimes an excellent fricking story is only a good fricking story.” Id. at 415.