individual. we ll leave that at that. before announcing sentence on these cases, with regard to all of the other pending cases, are any of them here in colleton, i m sure some of them are. yes, sir. half of them or? i don t have that in front of me, but there are a substantial number of charges here, buford s, allendale, there may be others i m not thinking of right now. we might have warn out our welcome here. they have been and i ll take this opportunity to thank sheriff hill and all of the court officials and really everyone i ve met and dealt with while here in colleton county, just been great. without any delay we re going to schedule some of the other matters. i know mr. harpootlian s scheduling is complicated and you ve sacrificed quite a bit to be able to be here defending mr. murdaugh as well as the attorney general s office with all the other many, many they thinks and obligations you have and to be able to have the attorney general here, alan wilson, for th
You re not compelled to say anything. but you have the opportunity to do so. i ll tell you again, i respect this court, but i m innocent. i would never under any circumstances hurt my wife maggie, and i would never under any circumstances hurt my son pau-pau. and it might not have been you. it might have been the monster you become when you take 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 opioid pills. maybe you become another person. i ve seen that before. the person standing before me was not the person who committed the crime, though it s the same
To come forward and to speak, and they re encouraged to do so if that is their desire, i have no problem whatsoever with the jurors unmasking themselves and speaking freely with the media because they have undergone a life changing experience. all right, everybody, we are going to continue to monitor what happens inside this courtroom. but i want to bring back ellison and dave here with me. so ellison, i was talking about just the striking statements and the judge s sentencing talking about paul and maggie visiting alec, but also i think one thing that has struck all of us here is maybe some emotion that we re seeing from john marvin, his brother, relatively lack of emotion from buster. no emotion from alex murdaugh. reporter: yeah, and you think of who the victims are in this case, right? paul murdaugh, maggie murdaugh, their family is in that courtroom. anyone who has been impacted by this, any victim of the defendant in south carolina has a right to address the court and
Someone who is an upstanding member of the community, at least was, and so i think the prosecutors there decided that it would complicate things. it would be additional paperwork. you have to get the jury to be qualified for the death penalty, and they wouldn t get it anyways. and the fact is they ve had trouble getting the death penalty in the last decade in south carolina. but you see the judge, look, we have seen the death penalty for less than this, so this is another example in the judge s mind of murdaugh s privilege. let s talk about the victim statements, the lack of victim statements here. the two victims this this case, paul and maggie are no longer with us. we ve seen throughout the trial too, the support of buster murdaugh, of john marvin, of members of alex murdaugh s family. did it strike you that nobody spoke today for victim statements? yeah, a little bit. this is a chance for victims to finally speak up. you know, the victims are not here, and others who have been
Saying and that s the language he used on the stands saying i would never intentionally hurt them. i did not do this. stick around for us, please, we have some of that from alex murdaugh s statement right here in court before he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. let s listen. judge, i ll tell you again, i respect this court, but i m innocent. i would never under any circumstances hurt my wife maggie, and i would never under any circumstances hurt my son pau-pau. per ellison s point, dave aronberg, you and i were listening to that, you told me he keeps lying. and to ellison s point we expect that he will appeal. we expect maybe appealing on the grounds of those financial crimes that were allowed in, which he admitted to on the stand. but the judge even today saying when will it end? when will the lies end? the judge gave him a chance to finally come clean at the end before his sentencing and he