COLUMBIA, S.C. — To decide where the second Alex Murdaugh murder trial will be, South Carolina state Judge Debra McCaslin must choose among a host of competing variables.

“There’s a lot of other things besides walking into a courthouse and sitting down and trying to try a case,” McCaslin told a pretrial hearing on Friday at the Lexington County courthouse.

“We have to consider security, transportation — is the courthouse adequate? Is there lodging? There are also docket considerations that have already been set for next year,” McCaslin said.

Other matters cited by attorneys on both sides include the cost and availability of restaurants and food trucks for the lunch break.

Additional factors: the size of a courtroom to accommodate a heavy media and public influx, the availability of public bathrooms in and outside the courthouse, nearby parking facilities and an additional overflow media room with a large television screen, plenty of typing tables and electric hookups.

A competent clerk of court is another factor. Actions involving jury tampering by former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill caused the South Carolina Supreme Court to overturn Murdaugh’s guilty verdicts in May. A Colleton County jury had convicted Murdaugh in 2023 of killing his wife, Maggie, and son Paul in 2021 at their family estate, Moselle, in rural Colleton County.

A clerk of court has key duties in a trial including getting food for jurors and coordinating security.

“Transportation” as mentioned by McCaslin presumably means making the new site as accessible as possible to the many witnesses from Colleton County, where the killings took place. Another thing to consider: the ease of travel for the attorneys and staff of the defense and attorney general’s prosecution teams, nearly all of whom come from the Columbia area.

At Friday’s hearing, much of the discussion of where a new trial should be centered on arguments for or against Charleston.

Murdaugh’s defense team said it strongly prefers Charleston due to its large potential jury pool — seven times that of Colleton County, and a large jury pool that would presumably make it easier to pick an unbiased jury.

But Creighton Waters, lead prosecution attorney of the attorney general’s office, strenuously objected to Charleston, saying the historic tourist city’s cost of living, traffic congestion and scarce downtown parking should rule it out.

Richland County courthouse?

On Monday, McCaslin’s job of choosing a new site may have gotten easier.

Murdaugh defense attorney Dick Harpootlian, in an email letter to the judge, dropped his bid for Charleston.

Instead, Harpootlian proposed the Richland County courthouse in downtown Columbia as a possible site. He stressed the cost savings in hotels since both defense and prosecution teams are from the Columbia area. Harpootlian also stressed the size of the potential jury pool in Richland as comparable to Charleston’s, “giving a much greater opportunity to find an impartial jury.”

Colleton, with a population of 39,382 according to the U.S. Census, is a much smaller county than Richland, which has 434,956 people.

Colleton racial breakdown is 33% Black to 60% white. Richland’s racial situation is 47% Black to 44% white.

Prosecutors have yet to respond to Harpootlian’s offer of Richland County being acceptable.

Veteran Columbia defense attorney Jack Swerling said in the interview that the Richland County courthouse would be suitable for a Murdaugh retrial.

Swerling, who has been in two major change of venue death penalty trials, said in those two cases, choosing a county with similar demographics was a key consideration for the judges involved. Demographics can mean not only the size of the population or the racial breakdown, but also other factors such as median household income and educational level, Swerling said.

If McCaslin were to pick Richland, it would likely be the biggest murder trial in that courthouse since 1983, when serial killer Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins was tried in a death penalty case for using a smuggled bomb to blow up an inmate on South Carolina’s death row. In that case, jury selection took four weeks. Gaskins was found guilty and got the death penalty.

Coincidentally, Harpootlian was the assistant prosecutor in that case.

McCaslin’s methodology

Exactly how McCaslin will pick a county courthouse is not known.

However, in a June 29 Murdaugh hearing, she revealed herself to be a hands-on judge who will make exploratory telephone calls herself. In that hearing, McCaslin said she had called the prison where Murdaugh is confined to investigate what resources he had to review the evidence in his case.

Consequently, it is possible McCaslin will make exploratory visits to various courthouses to judge for herself their suitability and talk with various clerks of court and their staffs.

In addition to studying rulings in past change of venue cases, South Carolina trial judges are known to talk with other judges and check with the Supreme Court before making major decisions. McCaslin could also hold an additional hearing to explore the issue.

“She could also accept exhibits from the prosecution and defense to get justification for a particular county or circuit,” Swerling said.

One ruling McCaslin has already acknowledged looking at was a detailed order by state Judge R. Keith Kelly in an ongoing case, Beach v. Parker. In that case, Kelly ordered a case in the Lowcountry 14th Judicial Circuit — the same circuit Colleton County is in — transferred to Spartanburg County in the Upstate.

In that Aug. 12 ruling, Kelly found that two high-profile cases involving the Murdaugh family — one a 2019 case of a fatal boat crash and the other Murdaugh’s own 2023 double-murder trial and conviction — had made picking a fair and impartial jury in the 14th Judicial Circuit “improbable.”

Kelly then ruled that “the interests of justice” would be served by transferring the case to Spartanburg County in the Upstate to obtain a jury that “would be free from outside relationships or pervasive knowledge about the subject matter of this case and to permit the parties to conduct a fair and impartial trial on the merits.”

Kelly added, “the Spartanburg County courthouse offers enhanced facilities, security, parking and other accommodations better tailored to the needs of the instant case due to its high profile status.”

Murdaugh’s first trial

Although in a rural county, the historic Colleton County courthouse proved a worthy location for Murdaugh’s first trial in 2023.

The second floor courtroom held more than 200 people, and room for approximately 30 designated media. Other media had a spacious room across the street with a large flat screen television airing the proceedings, plenty of tables and electric outlets.

Although there was a shortage of restaurants around the courthouse, numerous food trucks served lunch daily to several hundred court officials, media and the public.

There was plenty of parking and an expansive lawn in front of the courthouse provided space for media stars such as Nancy Grace to report on the case. One drawback: no second-floor bathrooms for the public.

McCaslin’s choice

On Friday, McCaslin did indicate that if the defense and prosecution could agree on a site, that could be where the trial would be held.

“I was in hopes the two of you-all could agree on a destination but since that’s not happening, I will decide, and I will let you-all know,” McCaslin told Harpootlian and Waters.

Wherever site McCaslin choses, the most important thing is to pick jurors “who honestly can be fair and impartial to both sides ... win, lose or draw,” Waters said Friday. “In the end, all I want is a fair jury.”

Harpootlian wants a fair jury, too, but he also wants a jury chosen out of a large jury pool.

Besides Richland, courthouses said to be in the mix of possible choices include Clarendon, York, Lancaster, Florence, Spartanburg, Lexington, Newberry and Greenville.

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