OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
11:33 AM – Monday, May 18, 2026
In the latest escalation of one of the nation’s most sensational legal sagas, disbarred South Carolina attorney and convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against former Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill.
Hill previously served as the elected Colleton County Clerk of Court in South Carolina during the 2023 six-week double-murder trial of Murdaugh. As clerk, her official duty was to act as the primary caretaker of the jury, manage court exhibits, and assist the trial judge in ensuring the smooth administrative running of the proceedings.
The federal complaint, filed on Monday, comes just five days after the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously overturned Murdaugh’s double-murder convictions and ordered a new trial.
The state’s highest court threw out the 2023 guilty verdicts for the murders of his wife and son based on two primary issues from the original trial:
- Jury Tampering by the Court Clerk: The justices ruled that Hill improperly influenced the jury. The court cited evidence that Hill made comments undermining Murdaugh’s credibility before he testified, pressured jurors to reach a quick verdict, and misrepresented information to have a juror removed.
- Overuse of Financial Crimes Evidence: The Supreme Court also faulted the original trial judge for allowing prosecutors to delve “far too deep” into Murdaugh’s extensive financial crimes. The justices ruled that the 12-plus hours of testimony regarding his financial schemes went well beyond establishing a motive and instead created “unfair prejudice.”
Represented by his defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, Murdaugh is now seeking compensatory and punitive damages, accusing Hill of abusing her official power under the color of state law to explicitly violate his constitutional rights to an impartial jury and a fair trial.
The federal lawsuit heavily leverages the state Supreme Court’s May 13th ruling. In their unanimous 5–0 decision, the state’s justices wrote that Hill had “placed her fingers on the scales of justice” and “egregiously attacked Murdaugh’s credibility.”
Seizing on this language, Murdaugh’s federal complaint quotes the justices describing Hill’s conduct as “breathtaking,” “disgraceful,” and “unprecedented in South Carolina.” The civil rights action argues that because the state’s highest court has already established that extensive jury tampering occurred, Hill must be held personally and financially liable for the resulting constitutional deprivations.
According to the filed complaint, Hill utilized her unsupervised access to the jury to systematically guide them toward a quick guilty verdict.
The lawsuit outlines numerous instances of misconduct, further alleging that Hill instructed jurors to closely scrutinize Murdaugh’s body language when he took the stand, in addition to warning them not to be “fooled,” “confused,” or “thrown off” by the defense’s arguments.
Additionally, the filing claims Hill engaged in frequent, inappropriate private conversations with the jury foreperson. Hill acted as an unsworn witness for the prosecution, effectively imploring the jury to convict the disgraced scion of the powerful Lowcountry legal dynasty, Murdaugh’s legal team added in the complaint.
A central argument of the federal lawsuit is the allegation that Hill’s actions were driven entirely by personal greed, fame, and financial ambition. The complaint echoes defense arguments that Hill intentionally orchestrated a quick guilty verdict to secure a lucrative book deal and future media appearances, which would have been jeopardized by a lengthy deliberation or a mistrial.
This narrative is also bolstered by Hill’s subsequent legal downfall. Following intense state investigations, she resigned from office in March 2024 and ultimately pleaded guilty in December 2025 to state charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and misconduct in office.
Those charges stem from her illegally leaking sealed crime scene photographs to the media and leveraging her position to write her self-published book, “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders,” which was later pulled from shelves.
While the civil rights lawsuit seeks to penalize Hill for her actions, it will have no immediate bearing on Murdaugh’s physical custody. Despite the South Carolina Supreme Court tossing his consecutive life sentences for the June 2021 shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, the 57-year-old Murdaugh remains incarcerated.
He is currently serving a separate 40-year federal prison sentence, alongside concurrent state sentences, after pleading guilty to stealing approximately $12 million through dozens of complex wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering schemes targeting his former clients and law firm.
Meanwhile, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has vowed to “aggressively” retry Murdaugh for the murders, expressing hope that a second trial can be scheduled before the end of the year. However, the legal landscape for the upcoming prosecution will look much different.
In addition to the taint of Hill’s misconduct being removed, the Supreme Court ruled that the original trial judge went too far by allowing prosecutors to introduce more than twelve hours of prejudicial testimony regarding Murdaugh’s financial crimes during the murder trial.
Denied the ability to use his financial unraveling as a primary motive, the state now faces a much steeper climb to secure a second conviction.
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