we will also likely see his attorneys appeal his murder charges here. jose? ellison barber, charles coleman, glen kirschner, thank you so much. today marks one month since a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in east palestine, ohio. a month ago today. and last night residents angrily confronted representatives from norfolk southern, the company that operated the derailed train, along with federal and state officials at a town hall. we re very sorry for what happened. we feel horrible about it. and as people continued to express health and safety concerns, the epa ordered norfolk southern to begin testing for highly toxic dioxins. joining us from canfield, ohio, is jesse kirsch.
verdict in just three hours for the murder of his wife maggie and son paul. nbc s craig melvin sat down with the defense team following today s sentencing hearing, and he asked them about the video that put alec at the scene of the crime. how damning was the lie about the kennel video? damning. extremely. we were talking about jim and i were getting prepared four or five months ago, and, you know, we were looking for a way to get around we call it the lie. it s the lie. how do you get around it. how do you explain it? and apparently he didn t. so this case really boiled down to the big lie versus the big why. why would he do it? and to this day, the why would he do such a thing has never been answered. you can watch more on the interview tonight on a special episode of dateline, joining me from walterboro is nbc news correspondent ellison barber and on set, nbc news legal
correspondent, laura jarrett. ellison, talk me through it first, right? it was quick this morning to say the least. we thought it was going to take a lot longer than it actually did. take us through what actually took place in the courtroom. reporter: we thought we were going to hear a lot of victims statements because that s a part of a process commonly known as allocution, laura, i m confident can explain all of that better than me. my understanding is it s not something that takes place in a whole lot of states. but because that s something that happens here, we expected to maybe hear hours of victim statements and that did not happen, instead, what you had was a very brief statement from the prosecutor, a very brief statement from the defendant, alec murdaugh, saying i am negligent, i would not hurt my wife maggie. i would not hurt my son paul, and then a lot from the judge as he went to sentence him, and
i sentence you to prison for murdering him for the rest of your natural life. before he was sentenced, murdaugh addressed the court this morning. i m innocent. i would never under any circumstances hurt my wife maggie and i would never under any circumstances hurt my son paul paul. pretty much all he said. last night in just under three hours of deliberations, the jury found murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime. joining us now is nbc news correspondent ellison barber, who has been so closely following this trial from outside the courtroom, and charles coleman, civil rights attorney, former prosecutor, as well as glen kirschner, former federal prosecutor, charles and glen are msnbc legal analysts. ellison, you ve been there for so long covering this trial. what has the reaction been like there today and this was such an unusual morning in so many ways.
would think ladies and gentlemen you would hear some anger there, but you don t. it is effective you hear them for the first time embracing that video when the prosecution sees it as its strongest piece of evidence. so, ellison, walk us through what we can expect for the remainder of the day. reporter: yeah, jose, we should probably have another hour from the defense here. if i can pick up on what laura touched on in the kennel video, it was also an interesting moment, i thought, when you had the defense attorney jim griffin also seemed to try to touch a little on what the prosecution had of late, where they had been raising questions about the sincerity of alex murdaugh s struggles with addiction and when they were talking about that kennel video, they seemed to make an appeal to the sympathies of the jury saying he lied being down there because he s an addict, saying addiction is real, and addicts lie and steal and that s what happened here. in terms of what else to expect