Alex Murdaugh granted change of venue for murder retrial, past testimony allowed

A judge ruled Friday that testimony Alex Murdaugh gave at his first murder trial can be heard by jurors in his retrial.

A judge ruled Friday that testimony Alex Murdaugh gave at his first murder trial can be heard by jurors in his retrial.

“When you testify in a case, there are consequences,” South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Debra McCaslin said at a status hearing. “I’m going to allow it in, subject to what is being testified to in the trial.”

Alex Murdaugh enters the courtroom for a hearing on Aug. 14, 2026, at the Marc H. Westbrook Judicial Center in Lexington, S.C. Tracy Glantz / The State Newspaper via AP poolMcCaslin also granted the defense’s request to begin independent testing of DNA evidence recovered from Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails, and agreed to move Murdaugh’s double-murder retrial out of Colleton County.

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, noted that people have been stopped on the street for interviews about the case, arguing the county has become “poison” and that “the courthouse is the scene of the crime.”

Prosecutor Creighton Waters countered that the issue is “not pretrial publicity,” but whether potential jurors will need to “honor their oath to be fair and impartial.”