Prosecutors reject claims that cellphone evidence was withheld from Murdaugh

South Carolina state prosecutors rejected defense claims that raw cellphone evidence was withheld in the Alex Murdaugh murder case, filing court documents that label the defense’s account as false and manufactured, Fox News reported.

Court Documents Dispute Missing Extraction Files

The motion filed Tuesday serves as the state’s response to an earlier defense filing from September. Murdaugh’s legal team previously claimed they never received extraction files, key chain files, and extraction logs from seized smartphones. Prosecutors countered by releasing 40 pages of emails, file folder screenshots, and signed discovery receipts spanning late 2022 to early 2023.

Judicial filings indicate that South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigators handed over complete, unredacted raw extractions, key chain files, password logs, and reports to defense specialists during October and November 2022. State attorneys likewise surfaced correspondence from January 20, 2023—three days prior to the start of jury selection for the initial trial—which captured the defense asking for a replacement copy of the Murdaugh phone extraction due to having misplaced the initial set.

“The State will be glad to send the cell phone evidence to the defense yet one more time if they have somehow messed up or lost their copies again,” the motion states.

Murdaugh was convicted in March 2023 of the 2021 killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, and was sentenced to two life terms. However, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned his conviction in May 2026 after finding that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill improperly influenced jurors. Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin is presiding over the case as Murdaugh awaits a new trial scheduled for April 2027 in Lexington, South Carolina.