Disgraced attorney and convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh just took a step many expected. His attorneys just filed a notice of appeal for the convictions and sentences just a week after he was found guilty of murdering his wife and younger son, new court records indicate.
The notice was filed in the South Carolina Court of Appeals on Thursday, ABC News reports.
Following the discovery of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, and Paul Murdaugh, 22’s lifeless bodies near the dog kennels at their family estate in June 2021 with multiple gunshot wounds, Murdaugh, 54, was found guilty of their murder and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
The two life sentences for each murder will run consecutively; Judge Clifton Newman ruled last week.
Throughout the high-profile trial, Murdaugh has maintained his innocence. However, he admitted to lying to investigators, abusing medications, and other dubious acts.
“I’m innocent. I would never hurt my wife, Maggie, and I would never hurt my son, Paw-Paw,” he said during his sentencing hearing Friday morning.
After deliberating for just three hours, jurors returned a guilty verdict.
Most following the trial, including prosecutors, have agreed that the cellphone video that placed him at the scene of the crimes minutes before they occurred put the proverbial nail in Murdaugh’s coffin.
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Jurors believed the video disproved the claim that he was not at the kennels on the day of the murders.
Prosecutors also argued that years of lies and financial troubles precipitated the murders as a way to turn attention away from those issues and gain sympathy with those in business with Murdaugh.
The decline of a once-influential lawyer from a family that had wielded authority over the Lowcountry region for generations was chronicled throughout the trial. After his wife and son were killed, Murdaugh resigned from his law firm, which then sued him for allegedly embezzling funds from clients and the company into a fake bank account for several years. He was also disbarred as a result of money laundering allegations.