Alex Murdaugh to be sentenced for murder

Disgraced South Carolina attorney and convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh will face his fate Friday morning when he is sentenced in the brutal shooting deaths of his wife and son.

The proceedings at Colleton County Courthouse in Waterboro come just a day after Murdaugh, 54, was found guilty of the grisly 2021 murders.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before coming to the verdict on Thursday night — following six weeks of wild testimony that chronicled the unraveling of a powerful legal dynasty.

Murdaugh faces 30 years to life in prison without parole for each murder charge.

“I am surprised,” Joseph McCulloch Jr., a Columbia, South Carolina lawyer and close friend of the Murdaughs, said of the verdict.

“I expected much more deliberation after six weeks of testimony and all that evidence. I thought it would end with a hung jury.”

The lurid saga, which garnered national attention, started on June 7, 2021, when Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul, 22, were shot dead by the kennels at the family’s Islandton hunting lodge.

During their four weeks of testimony, the state’s attorneys argued that Murdaugh, the heir to a storied legal dynasty, killed his wife and son to cover up his financial crimes that were on the verge of being discovered.

The defense, however, painted a starkly different image of Murdaugh as a fumbling, guilt-ridden patriarch in the throes of drug addiction.

One of the key moments in the closely-watched trial was the content of an interview between Murdaugh and investigators three days after the killings.

Prosecutors played the audio of the exchange in court, claiming that Murdaugh clearly sobbed “I did him so bad!” when shown images of Paul’s mangled body.

However, Murdaugh’s defense team countered the state’s argument with a slowed-down version of the recording, which they argued proved that Murdaugh actually cried “They did him do bad!”

When Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense, he admitted to lying to police about his whereabouts the night of the murders.

Though he initially maintained that he was visiting his mother, who had advanced Alzheimer’s disease, at the time of the killings, Murdaugh testified that he was indeed the voice captured by Paul in a Snapchat video at 8:45 p.m.

The clip was recorded just five minutes before experts believe the young man and his mother were gunned down.

“The evidence is overwhelming but I can’t believe the jury was brave enough to convict him,” said an ex-friend of the family, John Wright, of the conviction.

“I honestly didn’t think they would. Everyone knows these guys, and in addition to that, they had a lot of influence here. I thought the jury might be more reticent or fearful about convicting him.”

A lawyer for the family of the Murdaugh family’s late housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, told The Post he was glad that Murdaugh “now drinks from the same cup of justice as every other murderer.”

Satterfield, 57, died in 2018 after Murdaugh said she tripped over his dogs, according to the family’s lawsuit. Hampton County Coroner Angela Topper said that the death was suspicious, though no autopsy was conducted.

One-time murder suspect OJ Simpson even chimed in on the captivating case, stating in a Twitter video that he felt the Murdaugh trial could have ended with the same not-guilty verdict as his own.

“Do I think it’s more likely that he did it? Yes. But more likely equals reasonable doubt,” said the former football star, who was acquitted in 1995 of the stabbing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman.

In addition to the murder convictions, Murdaugh also faces trial over dozens of alleged financial crimes that could total over 700 years behind bars, Law & Crime reported.