Alex Murdaugh avoided death sentence because of ‘racial and class privilege,’ observers say

Murdaugh family has presided for generations over South Carolina courts

Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison on Friday in South Carolina for the 2021 murders of his wife and son. Observers argue Murdaugh, who is white, was able to avoid the death penalty because of his wealth, race, and family background, coming from a line of lawyers and prosecutors who presided in Hampton County for generations.

“It is hard to ignore the fact that that the decision provided yet another example of racial and class privilege in the death penalty system,” Austin Sarat, a death penalty expert and jurisprudence professor at Amherst College, wrote in USA Today.

Describing death row, Professor Sarat noted, “Throughout U.S. history, it has been a place heavily populated by poor Black men.”

In South Carolina, a state with a population that’s two-thirds white, half of the 35 people on death row are Black.

During Murdaugh’s sentencing, Judge Clifton Newman pointed to similar ironies.

“Over the past century, your family – including you – have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom, and many have received the death penalty – probably for lesser conduct,” Judge Newman said last week, explaining how statutorily, Murdaugh could’ve gotten the death penalty if prosecutors had sought it.

“We have a wife who has been killed, murdered, a son savagely murdered, a lawyer – person from a respected family who has control of justice in this community for over a century – a person whose grandfather’s portrait hanged at the back of the courthouse – that I had to have ordered removed in order to ensure that a fair trial was had,” he continued, adding, “It’s also particularly troubling, Mr Murdaugh, because as a member of the legal community, you’ve practiced law before me, and we’ve seen each other at various occasions throughout the years.

Over nearly a century, three members of the Murdaugh family sought the death penalty against more than 30 people, the Post and Courier of Charleston reports.

State officials decided against the death penalty in Murdaugh’s case last year.

Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s attorney general, told The New York Times he made the call based on practical considerations, as seeking death would be more costly, complicated, and might not result in an actual execution for decades or at all. (South Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution since 2011, in part because of issues sourcing lethal injection drugs.)

“There are so many factors you have to consider,” Mr Wilson said. “We felt like this case is complicated enough.”

Some argued Murdaugh had other advantages that the disproportionately Black, oftentimes economically disadvantaged people who usually end up on death row did not.

One of Murdaugh’s lawyers is Dick Harpootlian, a state senator and member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee. In South Carolina, judges are not elected, but appointed by state legislators.

“Harpootlian’s edge is his built-in advantage with the judges,” a prominent Charleston attorney told the New Yorker in January.

As The Independent has reported, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests the death penalty is used disproportionately against people of colour, the poor, and is often the result of these groups facing discriminatory policing or poor legal representation.

The Independent and the nonprofit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ) have launched a joint campaign calling for an end to the death penalty in the US. The RBIJ has attracted more than 150 well-known signatories to their Business Leaders Declaration Against the Death Penalty - with The Independent as the latest on the list. We join high-profile executives like Ariana Huffington, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson as part of this initiative and are making a pledge to highlight the injustices of the death penalty in our coverage.