In their latest court filing, attorneys for convicted murderer and fraudster Alex Murdaugh argue that his 40-year sentence for financial crimes violates his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
In April, Murdaugh pled guilty to 22 counts of fraud and other financial crimes after reaching a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Afterward, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison, even though he and prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel for a 30-year sentence to run concurrently with Murdaugh’s 27-year sentence for state financial crime and consecutive life sentences for the murders of his wife Maggie, and youngest son, Paul.
Murdaugh appealed the sentence, and his new filing argues that the lengthy sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is effectively a life sentence, given Murdaugh’s age, WCSC reported. Murdaugh, who is 55, is required to serve at least 85% of his sentence, which amounts to 34 years. But Murdaugh’s life expectancy is only another 24 years, according to the Social Security Administration.
Murdaugh’s filing says the state guidelines should have sentenced him between 17 and 22 years for the crimes and cites three similar cases with median sentences of 17.5 years.
Judge Gergel sentenced Murdaugh to the longer term, stating in his ruling that Murdaugh stole money from “the most needy, vulnerable people.” This included a client who was left without the use of his arms or legs after a crash and a trust fund for children whose parents had been killed in a car crash.
Murdaugh pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars from his previous law firm and its clients and, in addition to prison time, was ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution to his victims.
“Trust in our legal system begins with trust in its lawyers,” U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs said in a statement at the time. “South Carolinians turn to lawyers when they are at their most vulnerable, and in our state, those who abuse the public’s trust and enrich themselves by fraud, theft, and self-dealing will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The sentencing hearing almost didn’t happen, as prosecutors filed a motion the week before trying to back out of their plea agreement with Murdaugh, claiming he failed a polygraph test and was, therefore, lying about where the money was spent.
The federal government based its attempt to revoke the plea agreement on the failed polygraph test but asked the courts not to release the results. Murdaugh’s attorneys filed a motion last week opposing the federal prosecutors’ request.
“To allow the Government to publicly accuse Murdaugh of breaching his plea agreement while also allowing the Government to hide all purported evidence supporting that accusation from the public would violate the public’s right to the truth,” Murdaugh’s attorneys, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, wrote in their motion, according to CNN.
Polygraph tests are not permitted as evidence in court because they are unreliable.
The attorneys argued in court documents that the polygraph Murdaugh failed was not reliable because the administrator admitted to Murdaugh that he had just tested Joran van der Sloot, who admitted to killing Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005.
“There are legitimate questions as to whether the Government intentionally manipulated the results to void the plea agreement and achieve the prosecutors’ stated desire to ‘ensure that he’s never a free man again,’” the attorneys wrote previously, according to the Associated Press.
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