Prosecutors say Alex Murdagh's defense is making a "dangerous" move to show DNA proves he didn't kill the family.
Alex Murdagh's defense team is betting on Othram's Y-STR DNA test that prosecutors call "high risk" ahead of his April 2027 murder retrial.
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Alex Merda's defense team is taking a "high-risk" gamble on a DNA test in an effort to implicate another killer, a prosecutor quoted a defense expert as saying.
Judge Debra McCaslin on Friday sided with the defense over prosecutors' objections, allowing new testing on Maggie Merda's cellphone swabs and fingernail clippings, even though the process will likely use up the last testable samples. McCaslin said due process requires that a defendant be given a "meaningful opportunity to present a full and complete defense."
Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul at the family's Moselle property in Colton County. The South Carolina Supreme Court later overturned the convictions after finding that former Calton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill had improperly influenced the jury.
His retrial is scheduled to begin on April 5, 2027. Mardav is still innocent of the murders.
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Alex Merda at a pretrial hearing in Lexington, South Carolina on October 16, 2026. (Tracy Glantz of The State and Henry Taylor of The Post and Courier.)
The defense team plans to use Othram to perform Y-STR testing, a method that isolates DNA from the Y chromosome to produce a profile of the male contributor in samples where female DNA predominates.
Morda's lawyers claim that all three samples contain unidentified male DNA and seek to determine whether they originated from a single man. Defense lawyer Phil Barber said the findings could rule out certain people as contributors and may provide ancestry information, although the test cannot distinguish between men with the same paternal ancestry.
Marado's defense says the newly disclosed stored DNA samples must go to OTHRAM before government analysis.
Alex Marda's attorney, Dick Harpotlian, speaks during a pretrial hearing on Oct. 16, 2026. (Tracy Glantz of The State and Henry Taylor of The Post and Courier)
Defense said the process will take approximately 90 days.
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters told the court the test was "high risk" and unlikely to produce significant evidence.
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"When we talked to their expert, he said, yes, it's almost an exclusive source sample. It's a high-risk sample and it's unlikely to produce anything, and [it appears] to be the case because when we got the quantity from [Othram], the goose egg is on the Y chromosome," Waters said.
Barber made his case for the new test, acknowledging that unknown male DNA could have an innocent explanation, but said the pattern was hard to ignore.
Alex Murdaugh in court on Oct. 16, 2026. (Tracy Glantz of The State and Henry Taylor of The Post and Courier)
"Maybe it's different male DNA. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's a red herring...but as we go from one-handed to two-handed and now the phone, you know, it's becoming less and less of a red herring," Barber said. "If you have an unknown person under both of his fingernails and after the murder he throws the phone out on the road and it's not him. I mean, that's very important for the defense."
Notably, both the defense and the prosecution said that once the DNA testing was done, there wouldn't be enough samples left for retesting in any post-trial proceedings, which Mordagh agreed with.
"There's enough to do the test, but not enough to do the test, and then there's enough left over," Barber said.
"My client has informed me that he is waiving it," he said, referring to any post-conviction retrial.
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Alex Murdaugh appears for a court hearing on Monday, June 29, 2026, at the Mark H. Justice Center. Westbrook arrives in Lexington, South Carolina. Murdaugh will be tried on June 7, 2021, in the shooting of his wife and son after his original conviction was overturned due to jury tampering. (Tracy Glantz/State via Pool)
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"They could argue, hey, you found samples, the male DNA was unknown. That DNA didn't go to our client, did you? There's someone else who could potentially be connected to this crime," Ritter says. "Now, unless it comes back that it's a person who has reason to be suspicious, they're going to have a problem because if it comes back to someone with a rock solid fact or someone with an innocent explanation as to why their DNA might be under their fingernails.
"It's one of those situations where sometimes it's better for the defense to remain unknown, but they seem determined to find out who that DNA belongs to," he added.
Marda is due back in court on November 13.
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