0 work, your family, your personal obligations, maybe some of you missed vacations. but you've been here in a three-week trial and here we are at the end of six weeks. i want to thank you personally and on behalf of all of us and especially on behalf of alex murdaugh. in his opening statement it was explained the law governing your service requires each of you to engage in an unnatural task. in every criminal case, jurors are required to begin the process by presuming the defendant innocent. in this case, you were required under your solemn oath as we began to presume alex murdaugh innocent of these charges. and frankly that's not natural. when you hear on the news a crime was made and the defendant was arrested you were relieved. i wouldn't be surprised when you read in the paper that alex murdaugh was charged with the murder of his wife and son that you thought oh good, they got him. but those opinions and each of you when you filled out your questionnaire agreed and affirmed that you would leave those at the door of the courthouse. and that you would decide this case solely on the evidence. and that's what the law requires. and when we began, the law also requires you to presume him innocent of these charges. now, i've been doing this a long, long time and up until the advent of instant replay in sports, it has been very difficult to explain just how to do that to jurors. how jurors can do this, apply this presumption of innocence. if you are not interested in sports i apology for this analogy but the analogy is the instant replay. whether you are a clemson or georgia fan. on a saturday afternoon is play the called on the field and it is reviewed. the call on the field stands unless there is visible evidence that the call on the field was wrong. we see that every weekend in sports. here the call on the field that alex murdaugh is innocent of these charges. that's what the law requires. and that unless and until the state proves his guilt to each one of you individually voting individually, proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then that presumption of innocence stays with him. you aren't being tasked to give your opinion in this trial. you are being tasked to apply the constitution, the bedrock principles that protect us all from a government. bedrock principles are first you get tried by a jury of your peers, second that the jury of your peers begin presuming you innocent and third you will remain innocent until the government, if they can, proves to you individually in your mind that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. now, the judge will give you jury instructions on what that means beyond a reasonable doubt. but the definition has been defined that reasonable doubt is doubt that would cause a reasonable person to hesitate when making an important decision in their personal affairs such as to buy a house, get married, any consequential decision. you will be making when you get this case probably later this afternoon, you will be making one of the most consequential decisions you will have ever made in your life, i suspect. i don't know all your backgrounds but it will be a very consequential decision. if the proof the state has put before you causes you to hesitate when you go to fill out that vote as you are deliberating in your jury room. each of you will have a vote. you will have the right to vote guilty or not guilty. each of you will write it down. if there is any reasonable cause for you to hesitate to write guilty, then the law requires you to write not guilty. this burden of proof that we have, many of you may have had experience with civil cases and in civil cases the burden of proof is much lower. it is called by a preponderance of the evidence. you may have seen lawyers or judges or watched on tv as they give a visual image of lady justice who is blindfolded so she is not biased for one side of the other and scales on lady justice. those scales are the scales of justice. and in a civil case, if one party proves their case by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning ever so slightly tilt the scales in their favor they are entitled to the verdict. there is another heightened level of burden of proof in a civil case clear and convincing evidence. things to prove fraud or some intentional acts you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence. that's an intermediate level of proof. so it is not just tilt the scales ever so slightly in the favor of the party that prevails but you have to get 3/4 of the way there. now proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest standard of proof the law recognizes and it is -- you have to tilt the scales all the way to one side in order for the state to meet their burden. now a little bit about the verdict. you will have an option of guilty or not guilty. my friend over here travels a lot. he has been to a lot of countries and he frequently -- recently returned from scotland where he attended a jury trial in scotland. he tells me it is much libeling this except the lawyers wear a wig. i might benefit from something like that. but in scotland, rules are about the same until it gets time for the verdict in a criminal case. the jury in scotland where we derive our laws from, they are given three options. one option is guilty. second option is not guilty. third option is not proven. not proven. now here in america we have combined the verdict of innocent and not proven into one of not guilty. so when you go to render your verdict, if it is a verdict of not guilty, it is either you concluded that the defendant is innocent of the charges or that the government has not met their burden of proof. their heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. now, one of the reasons that defendants are presumed innocent and that government has such a high burden is because in criminal cases the defendant really doesn't have the ability, doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the lawful authority to execute search warrants, subpoena documents, to prove his or her innocence. and so a defendant cannot secure a crime scene, cannot lift the crime scene for fingerprints, shoe impressions, cannot secure telephones and get electronic data in the course of an investigation. so the defendant is limited on what they can do. in this case, on june 7th, 2021, alex murdaugh called 911 and officer deputy green and then followed by other deputies rolled up on the scene and he is standing on his property. his wife and son lie dead in a pool of blood. he is within yards of him and he just put a shotgun down. what would that look like 90 out of 100 cases when an officer rolls up it would look like the person who had the shotgun and two dead bodies may have done it. probably have done it. certainly someone who should be strongly considered. and all the officers in this case told you that. one deputy said he was a suspect but there were a lot of suspects out there. everybody was a suspect, fair enough? agent owen says we have a circle, immediate family members, especially if they found the deceased, the victims. he is in the circle by virtue of calling 911. that's fair enough. but what doesn't strike us as fair is that the next morning on june 8th after the gruesome murders of maggie and paul, this is what is issued, a joint press release carleton county that says at this time there is no danger to the public. at this time there is no danger to the public two people have been executed within -- y'all are out there, 100 yards, 200 yards from moselle road? they have been slaughtered. at this time there is no danger to the public? does that tell you that on june 8th law enforcement had decided it had to be alex murdaugh? it's a fair question for you to ask yourselves. a question that has not been fairly answered in this trial. what we know from june 7th to june 8th alex is a suspect and he is in the circle. from that day forward, he is at the mercy -- he is at the mercy of the ability of sled to exclude him from that circle. they have the ability to do a forensic work. they have the ability to interview witnesses and they have the ability to gather electronic data. and we believe that we've shown conclusively that sled failed miserably in investigating this case. had they done a competent job that alex would have been excluded from that circle a year ago, two years ago. but he would have been excluded. what did you hear from the witness stand? you heard from chief barry mccroix. i didn't know him until i got involved in the case but his reputation is outstanding and he is a consume -- he was concerned cars were pulling up and tire tracks not being protected and that they could have evidentiary value. and then you heard from mark ball who had a conversation with chief -- sheriff hill, who is another fine public servant here. and he also said we have to stop cars from coming in here to preserve these tire impressions. and it was not done. it was not done. captain chatman from the carleton county sheriff's office testified about being other sets of tire tracks, as you came in off moselle road you probably saw where deputy green's vehicle had stopped right at the kennels but then on the other side where you saw that alex was parked and pacing on some of these videos, that's where captain chatman had talked about seeing tire tracks and he tried to track them. sled was -- it was like a trail to nowhere. it was a trail to nowhere. one deputy talked about seeing hair in maggie's hands. you didn't hear anything about the hair in maggie's hands from that moment forward. was it tested? was it sent off for analysis? there was no evidence of what, if anything, happened to the hair in maggie's hands. was it as a result of a struggle with her assailant? was it her own hair? we don't know the answer to that. we know they failed to take fingerprints and they should have. they failed to properly take footwear impressions from the feed room or at the apron right outside the feed room. i think that's -- i don't think that's uncontradicted. the agent worley who is doing the best she can did not go there to document footwear impressions. did not do that. you heard from our expert what is required and i believe another of our witnesses also agreed. and both -- i will get to the shot angles in a little bit. but both dr. kensy and mr. palmback have the murderer for paul standing on the concrete. whether one foot is in or out, both feet are in, but there should have been footwear impressions. but we'll never know because it was not preserved. it was not taken. the thing that has baffled us, has completely baffled us, is why did they never take dna samples off of maggie's clothes? her dress? why did they never take dna samples off paul's clothes? they never did. they never did. we asked their investigators why didn't you? that's somebody else's job. that's somebody else's job. it was never done. but you know whose clothing they took dna off of extensively? alex. and you heard an agent talk about all the different grids on her shirt where dna was -- samples were taken. was alex assaulted? no. was alex wrestling with the assailant on june 7th? there is no evidence of that. so why are they taking dna evidence off alex's clothing in june of 2021. there is only one reason and it goes back to this right here. there was only one reason. only one reason. they had decided that, unless we find somebody else, it is going to be alex. unless we find somebody else, it is going to be alex. the -- i will get into more detail about maggie's phone. maggie's phone was not secured properly. maggie's phone was -- well, let me just go right into it. maggie's phone was found on the side of the road in the morning or early afternoon on june 8th. whoever killed her threw that phone on the side of the road without a doubt, without a doubt. alex from the get go has said you get maggie's phone, you get my phone, and you get my on star data and you will not see my car traveling down the road with maggie's phone because it did not happen. it could not happen. detective owen have you got any yet? no, we sent the black box on the chevy to the f.b.i. it was a new model. turns out the data is encrypted and so we haven't got it yet. what about general motors? i'll do whatever i can do and have to do. so we're looking into it. we're looking into it. what we learned in this trial is sure sled sent a subpoena via fax machine to somebody in detroit, i believe, and whoever got it in detroit, whether it was a number off, i have no idea what the reason was, but we do know the initial response was we don't have anything. we don't have any onstar data that you are looking for. there is no indication that sled followed up with a phone call. no indication sled followed up with a letter. no indication sled did anything other than put it in a file. put the response in a file. and that was it. that was it, ladies and gentlemen, until somebody watching this trial somewhere contacted somebody at general motors and said why don't you guys cooperate with the f.b.i. and sled on this investigation? what are you talking about? so friday during -- sometimes in the last six weeks low and behold here comes all the onstar data that you got to see. and that would be great, that would be great but for the fact that when they seized maggie's phone, it had -- they put it in airplane mode. they knew how to do that. excuse me i'm losing my voice. i need some water. i apologize. that was pop or something else. they put it in airplane mode is the location services were still on meaning still pinging off gps satellites. and the phones don't hold that much memory. they hold a lot of data as we have learned but they don't hold that much memory and it writes over itself. and for gps location services, the ping points that we see from paul's phone on all that data, that would have been on maggie's phone for the 7th but for the fact that it wasn't extracted until sometime in like june 16th. i think that's the date. if i'm wrong, i apologize. but it is around the middle of june. that pinging information that we see on paul's phone from maggie's phone goes back to june 9th. a lot of good that does. we don't have it. we would have had it had they extracted it earlier. they say we didn't have enough data to upgrade the software that would read us. took us a while to get it. there is no explanation about that. you heard about fair day bags so it is not pinging against satellites. they didn't do that. it's lost. had they done it, i hope we wouldn't be here. i hope because i know it would say -- we have enough evidence in the record and we have to go around their elbow to get to our thumb to get there but there is sufficient evidence to show alex murdaugh was not driving down moselle road or tossed it. i don't know what time they think it is tossed but it would have gotten him out of the circle, i would hope. but probably not. because they have been so focused on him. now as i mentioned, alex asked multiple times -- i think the testimony was five times. agent owen, agent owen, if you get this data it will show i wasn't there. and, you know, we didn't learn why they didn't get it off alex' phone until very recently. you will remember on june 10th he gave sled his phone. yeah, you can copy it. please copy it. it will show -- it will show that i wasn't driving -- my phone was not with maggie's phone going down the road and i did what i said i did. well, they did extract it but what we've learned the extraction was a superficial extraction not because alex requested it, that's just what they did. so the logical surface extraction. they didn't go in and pull out any gps pinging data like you see on paul's phone. they have didn't get it off maggie's. now if alex had not made those requests to owen. they're disputing that. you can be 100% sure of they would have called detective owen on the witness stand during their rebuttal case to say no, he is lying. he didn't ask that of me. we got sheriff smells if here to say i didn't give him permission to put a blue light in his car. they came and challenged whether he had authority from the sheriff or maybe a deputy sheriff to put a blue light in his car but they didn't contradict anything you said i have oh he been asking, i've been asking for this data that would get me out of the circle. and now we know why it took so long to get the stuff from his car. because the f.b.i. wouldn't go to general motors on the -- the f.b.i. brought a suburban and reverse engineers these systems to try to come up with reports and they come in here and tell you this is what we got it's not complete or accurate. get onstar. thankfully we did. thankfully we did. so then we roll into labor day weekend of 2021. where alex long-time drug problem, his financial issues, misconduct were exposed. and that made him an easy, easy, easy target for sled. i have hate to say this, but the evidence is crystal clear from that moment they started fabricating evidence against alex. mr. griffin, that's an awful charge. don't all lawyers accuse law enforcement of fabricating evidence. this guy right here, a federal prosecutor, was a state prosecutor, and some of my best friends are in law enforcement, and i don't make that claim lightly. here what you have heard is they came up with a report that says alex' t-shirt had high velocity blood spatter on it. what's that? that means you are within feet of a shooting and they didn't just say any shooting. they said -- in their report it says as a result of paul's murder. that was number one. let's stick with number one. why not say it's fabricated? well, you heard the agent say we did confirmatory blood tests on that shirt. that means there was two types of tests, a presumptive test, what they use on a product called lcv and makes it turn purple where it might be blood. but it turns purple on other stages as well including bleach. you also heard the sheriff said it smelled like detergent. they spray it, turns purple in places so they think that must be blood. next thing they do at the sled lab is do a confirmatory test to see if it's blood. 0 for 74. not blood. not blood. that didn't stop sled from going out and pursuing with vengeance this report. they didn't give the no blood test result to the guy in oklahoma and when it surfaced, they had a problem on their hands and they were pushing it. up until this trial. you heard the testimony from the stand, that they went from mr. bloody shirt leading up to this trial to mr. clean during this trial. and they asked him and raised issues during the trial where were his clothes. no one is asking about the man's clothes he had on the snapchat video back at 7:00 with his son until november or so i think is what she said. the issue of changing clothes, it was late to the dance because when they went -- as you heard when they went to the carlton county grand jury to get an indictment they told the grand jury they had expert report that said high velocity blood spatter. i asked the agent when you went to the grand jury and you got the report, how did you not know that there is this test that says there is no blood? well, i didn't get the email. say it in somewhat jest but dig the dog eat his email? as the lead investigator in the case, how does he not get the lab report that says there is no blood on the shirt? we were raising cain about it and how can you say this on one hand and that on the other hand and here we are with a mr. clean theory that he washed off after brutally murdering maggie and paul. he takes a hose and washes himself off and gets in a golf cart buck naked i guess and drives to the house? so that's the blood spatter fabrication. the other is this blue rain coat with gsr and you remember that testimony, shelly smith who worked for miss libby and mr. randolph had told sled after september, after alex's problems had been exposed, after she had a conversation with a police officer following an accident investigation where she was in an accident, that on the morning, she said it here, as she told you on wednesday after mr. randolph's funeral, that turns out to be june 16th, that alex shows up at the house at alameda at 6:30 in the morning trying to get in and has a blue tarp and this blue tarp he -- she lets him in. goes upstairs with the tarp. he comes downstairs and lays out the tarp on her rocking chair in the living room and then he leaves and then she leaves to go to her day job, and when she left the blue tarp was laying out on miss libby's rocking chair. that was her testimony. and so sled gets that, gets a search warrant, goes to alameda and they seize a blue rain jacket. they seize a blue rain jacket. and when they do, they take that blue rain jacket and they show it to just about every family member. that they can think of. and it's defendant's 87, doug, if you can pull it up. put they show this blue rain jacket to all the family members that they can get in contact with and the rain jacket is -- no one recognizes it and sees it. no one says alex or paul or buster has ever worn it or maggie has ever worn it. had not seen the blue rain jacket. one more thing about the blue rain jacket. when they did the search at alameda, when they did the search there, marvin was there and john marlin asked hem did you find anything? we found a blue rain jacket back on the property. back on the property. back on the property. he said well my dad drives a buggy around. maybe it fell off the back of his buggy. clearly he was understanding it was back on the property and then they asked him to come look at the blue rain jacket and he was told it was found in the closet. and he said that doesn't sound right and they never clarified it. now here is a picture, 411 is a picture of the closet and you can see the blue rain jacket that is sort of folded up and stuffed down here at the bottom right. that's the blue rain jacket. and apparently right before this trial they showed shelly smith this picture and said does that look like a blue tarp you saw? yeah, sure it looks like it. they never showed her this. and she said this, 87 that's on the screen, she had never seen this. never seen this. but they did gsr testing on this and says oh, that's hot. a lot of gsr on there. and then -- and then there is this issue of misrepresenting what are the type ammunition found in the shotguns at the residence at moselle. paul was murdered with first shot was the buck shot through his chest. he was turned this way. went in here and then out under his arm. that was buck shot. the second shot was into the head. depending what expert and pathologist sees it this way or this way. but into the head. and that was still duck shot. i learned that you can't shoot ducks with anything but steel pellets because they don't want lead in the water. you have to have steel pellets. agent owen admitted regrudgingly he testified to the grand jury there were four weapons found upon the property in the gun room 12 gauges that were loaded -- i'm not saying 12 gauges. four shotguns loaded with buck shot and bird shot. there are four other ones. so that matches. guess what? totally not true. that was totally not true. he admitted on the stand it was not true. he admitted telling alex during the interview he said well, i can do trickery. i said are you trying to trick the grand jury? no, i didn't say that. we walked through it and he did say it. he didn't remember it. you remember the testimony. i said look, people make mistakes, don't you? >> that was a mistake. it's okay to make a mistake, right? you can make mistakes about time. that's the most common thing people make mistakes about. it's not all right for alex murdaugh who is in the center of the circle, who -- not all right for him to make mistakes about time. according to the same investigator who says it's okay, it happens all the time. but here we go. then eureka, they finally get into paul's phone in april of 2022 and they see -- they see cash, the dog and they see paul's feet walking around and they hear voices in the background. one sounds like alex. and off they go. they go off and get an indictment from the carleton county grand jury relying about high velocity gun spatter and four guns having the same load and relying on a rain jacket with gsr on it and alex' lying about being down at the kennels. we know after we've been here six weeks of those four things. [ >> return the updated items on your screen. >> that was turned off. >> i will turn it off. >> what we know is three out of those four things presented to the grand jury that you will be deliberating on for the indictments returned aren't true. no blood spatter, no gsr rain jacket that has ever been connected to alex whatsoever and no loaded gun. we're left with the latter. we are left with the latter. that alex lied about being down at the kennels and why did he lie? that is certainly a fair question and that's -- frankly, i wouldn't be sitting over there right now if he had not lied. but he did lie and he told you he lied and he told you why he lied. he said he lied because -- i tell you he lied because that's what addicts do, they lie. he lied because he had a closet full of skeletons he didn't want any more scrutiny on him, which is the most ironic thing in the world because depending on which day of the week, their theory is that he slaughtered his wife and son to distract from an impending financial investigation. he puts himself in the middle of a murder investigation and he puts himself in the spotlight of a media firestorm. that's their mode of evidence. but he lied. he lied because of his drug paranoia kicked in and he was clearly in the throes of addiction. he lied for all those reasons. but what he didn't lie for is covering up the fact that he killed maggie and paul. that is not the reason he did it. doug, will you play the dog kennel video, please? i will play the dog kennel video. >> please listen to the voices. 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