State of South Carolina v. Richard Alexander Murdaugh was an American criminal case in the fourteenth circuit of the South Carolina Circuit Court concerning the murders of Murdaugh's wife and their 22-year-old son in June 2021. The trial began on January 25, 2023, with instructions from the judge and opening statements from the prosecution and defense. Closing arguments began on March 1 and ended on March 2. The jury reached a guilty verdict on all four counts after approximately three hours of deliberation.Local media have called the trial South Carolina's "trial of the century" and "arguably one of the most high-profile and sensational cases in South Carolina legal history". Background On June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh—a member of the locally prominent Murdaugh family—called police from his cell phone at 10:06 pm, saying he had discovered the bodies of his 52-year-old wife Maggie and their 22-year-old son Paul near the dog kennels at the family's hunting lodge in Islandton, South Carolina. Both had been shot multiple times and with different weapons. Murdaugh reported that at the time of the killings (around 9 pm...