Alex Murdaugh planned to be killed in roadside shooting: defense

Alex Murdaugh assumed he would die in a botched murder-suicide plot alongside a South Carolina road, according to his lawyers.

Prosecutors argued the roadside shooting demonstrated a “consciousness of guilt" for fatally shooting his wife and son Paul, which led others to believe their killers had come back to target him, but defense attorneys told the court Murdaugh “didn’t intend to still be alive” when he "concocted" a plot to stage his own shooting, reported The Daily Beast.

“He didn’t do it to get some sort of sympathy,” defense attorney Dick Harpootlian argued. “He did it to be dead. That’s why he did it.”

Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh staged his own shooting so his only surviving son Buster would receive his $10 million life insurance payout, and lead prosecutor Creighton Waters argued that jurors should hear that testimony to demonstrate his guilt in the murders.

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However, Judge Clifton Newman ruled the roadside shooting evidence should not be presented to jurors because it did "not meet the logical relevancy test" and did not show "evidence of motive," although he allowed prosecutors to present evidence of the alleged financial crimes they say Murdaugh wanted to hide by killing his wife and son.