Condemning Murdaugh's 'Lies,' Judge Sentences Him to Life in Prison

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% :Lawyers in death penalty cases, he added, are also allowed to question prospective jurors one-on-one during the jury selection process, something he believed would have been advantageous to the defense.
47% : For some around the state, there were questions about whether the state attorney general's decision not to seek the death penalty had been a final moment in which Mr. Murdaugh had been able to exercise the privilege of his station.
46% : At a news conference in front of the Colleton County Courthouse on Friday, Mr. Harpootlian said he understood the prosecution's decision not to seek the death penalty against his client, and believed that he would have made the same choice in his previous role as a prosecutor.
45% : "I'm somebody that's prosecuted and defended a bunch of death penalty cases, and you never do it in a circumstantial case, because 99 times out of 100, a jury's not going to sentence someone to death without an 'I saw him do it,' 'He confessed,' or great, great forensic evidence, at the minimum," Mr. Harpootlian said.
42% : "He's 54 years old, and if you know anything about the death penalty it doesn't happen overnight," Creighton Waters, the assistant deputy attorney general who led the prosecution, said in an interview after the sentencing.
41% : He suggested that Mr. Murdaugh may have been lucky that prosecutors in his case had asked for a sentence of life in prison, rather than the death penalty, for which the case would have qualified under South Carolina law.
40% : "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," he said.
40% : The Post and Courier reported that the three Murdaugh patriarchs who served as top prosecutors had sought the death penalty against more than 30 people during their reign, which stretched from 1920 to 2006.
40% : "This probably helps show how arbitrary the death penalty is."
35% : Prosecutors said a range of factors led them to decide, a month before trial, not to pursue the death penalty in Mr. Murdaugh's case, including the cost and complexity of such a case, the uncertain legal state of executions in South Carolina, and the lengthier trial required in death penalty cases.

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