Alex Murdaugh is ‘arrogant’ and a ‘liar’: Randy Zelin
Criminal defense attorney Randy Zelin says Alex Murdaugh is ‘a liar’ and the prosecution did not address it enough to remind the jury.
Alex Murdaugh can be seen allegedly exploiting deceased former client Hakeem Pinckney, from whom he allegedly stole up to $1 million, in a video advertisement that came to light Monday during Murdaugh's double murder trial.
Murdaugh, a former attorney at his family's personal injury law firm, is accused of killing his wife and son in 2021 in what prosecutors allege was a scheme to distract attention away from his financial crimes totaling an estimated $9 million.
"We deal with so many clients who, unfortunately, have suffered so many catastrophic injuries and are unable to go about moving around the way we take for granted. To be able to show a jury those things instead of telling the jury about them — the benefit is unexplainable," Alex Murdaugh says in the 2021 ad for a tool called "Legal Video Expert" featuring Pinckney, a now-deceased quadriplegic car crash victim.
"There's absolutely no better tool in the courtroom than to capture that in video," Murdaugh continues, adding that video evidence of personal injury clients can move a jury "to tears."
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The former South Carolina lawyer is accused of stealing funds from his clients, including Pinckney and his family, and using them for personal expenses.
"As Alex Murdaugh said, there's absolutely no better tool in the courtroom than video, and this video just proves what we all know — he is a terrible human being," Justin Bamberg, an attorney for several victims of Murdaugh's embezzlement schemes, told Fox News Digital on Monday. "Hakeem deserved better. Now Alex wants 12 jurors to ignore a video putting him at the scene of the murder of Maggie and Paul. Talk about ironic."
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The allegations began to come to light in the spring and summer of 2021 before Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh were shot to death on June 7 of that year.
This photo shows Hakeem Pinckney, a deaf man whom Murdaugh represented after he was rendered a quadriplegic in a 2009 car crash. (Justin Bamberg)
A May 2022 indictment alleges Russell Lafitte, former CEO of Palmetto State Bank, conspired with Murdaugh to misappropriate more than $309,000 in funds being held in trust for Pinckney and his estate at Palmetto State Bank.
Hakeem; his mother, Pamela Pinckney; and his sister, Shaquarah Pinckney, were injured in the 2009 car crash that left Hakeem severely disabled before his death.
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Murdaugh represented the Pinckney family in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the tires on the vehicle. A different lawyer represented Pinckney's estate in a wrongful death lawsuit after he died at age 21 in 2011.
Defendant Alex Murdaugh is cross-examined by prosecutor Creighton Waters while testifying during his murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. (Joshua Boucher/The State via AP)
In total, the Pinckneys were entitled to between $800,000 to $1 million in settlement funds, but the family never received any of the money, Justin Bamberg previously told Fox News Digital.
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"To know that you put your trust and your emphasis in someone who says they have your best interest in mind, and looks you in your face, and tells you and your entire family that they have your best interest — that you got us 100 percent," Pamela Pinckney told FITSNews in January 2022. "And then you go and you steal from us, even though you got paid through legal fees to work the case, then you turn around and you steal on top of that from the family. And my son is deceased. That really it tears me apart literally every day."
Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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