Court Digest

South Carolina
Alex Murdaugh loses prison phone privileges
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has lost his phone privileges and his prison tablet computer after his lawyer recorded him reading his journal entries on a call for a documentary about his case, South Carolina Corrections Department officials said Wednesday.

Prison policy prohibits inmates from talking to the media without permission because the agency “believes that victims of crime should not have to see or hear the person who victimized them or their family member on the news,” state prisons spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said in a statement.

The media interview violation, along with another violation for using a different inmate’s password to make a telephone call, are prison discipline issues and not a crime, Shain said.

Murdaugh also lost his ability to buy items in the prison canteen for a month in the discipline hearing held Monday, Shain said.

He will have to get permission from prison officials to get another tablet, which can be used to make monitored phone calls, watch approved entertainment, read books or take video classes.

Murdaugh, 55, is serving a life sentence without parole for killing his wife and younger son. Prosecutors said the now disbarred attorney was worried investigators were about to determine he stole millions from his law firm and clients and was trying to get sympathy and buy more time to cover up the crimes.

Murdaugh adamantly denied the killings both to investigators and on the witness stand.

Murdaugh’s lawyer Jim Griffin recorded Murdaugh in June reading entries into a journal he kept during his double murder trial for an upcoming Fox Nation documentary on his case, prison records show.

Prison officials sent Griffin a note saying if he knowingly or unknowingly helps Murdaugh violate rules again, he could lose his ability to talk to his client.

Griffin didn’t respond to a message from The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Phone calls between lawyers and prisoners are not recorded or reviewed because their conversations are considered confidential. But prison officials said they began investigating Murdaugh after a warden reviewing other phone calls heard Murdaugh’s voice on a call made in a different inmate’s account.

Murdaugh said his phone password was not working. He also told the prison investigators about the recorded journal entries, according to prison records.

Murdaugh is expected to plead guilty on Sept. 21 in federal court to charges that he stole millions of dollars from clients, according to court records. It will be the first time he has admitted to a crime in court.

Murdaugh also faces about 100 charges in state court. Authorities said he stole millions from clients who suffered debilitating injuries and who needed money for medical care. He is charged with stealing from his family’s law firm and helping run a drug ring to launder money. Authorities said he asked a friend to kill him on the side of a lonely highway so his son would get $10 million in life insurance. The shot only grazed Murdaugh’s head.


Tennessee
Appeals court agrees that a former death row inmate can be eligible for parole
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — An appeals court has upheld a judge’s ruling that allows a former Tennessee death row inmate to be eligible for parole in four years after spending more than three decades in prison.

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals decided Wednesday that Shelby County Judge Paula Skahan properly ruled in January 2022 that Pervis Payne should serve the remainder of two life sentences at the same time, or concurrently, in the killings of a mother and her 2-year-old daughter.

Payne, 56, received the new sentences after he was removed from death row by the judge in November 2021 based on decisions by two court-appointed experts that Payne was intellectually disabled and could not be executed.

Payne was convicted of first-degree murder and received the death penalty for the 1987 slayings of Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter, Lacie Jo, who were repeatedly stabbed in their Millington apartment and left in a pool of blood. Christopher’s son, Nicholas, who was 3 at the time, also was stabbed but survived.

Under state law in effect at the time of Payne’s original sentencing, he must serve at least 30 years of his life sentences. His sentence in the stabbing of Nicolas has remained in place. Essentially, Skahan’s ruling meant Payne is eligible for parole after serving 39 years in prison.

The appeals court ruling affirms that Payne is eligible for a parole hearing in four years, said his lawyer, Kelley Henry.

State prosecutors argued Payne should serve the life sentences consecutively, or one after the other. He would not have been eligible for parole until he was 85 if Skahan had agreed. Instead, Skahan sided with defense lawyers after they presented witnesses during a December 2021 resentencing hearing who said Payne would not be a threat to the public if he were released.

Skahan said at the time that Payne “has made significant rehabilitative efforts” and he would have an extensive support network to help him if let out of prison.

“The trial court found that the State failed to carry its burden of showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the Defendant is a dangerous offender based upon the current need to protect the public,” the appeals court ruling said.

Payne, who is Black, has always maintained his innocence. He told police he was at Christopher’s apartment building to meet his girlfriend when he heard screaming from Christopher’s apartment. He entered her apartment to help but panicked when he saw a white policeman and ran away. Christopher was white.

During his trial, prosecutors alleged Payne was high on cocaine and looking for sex when he killed Christopher and her daughter in a “drug-induced frenzy.” Shelby County district attorney Amy Weirich, who was in office at the time of Skahan’s ruling freeing Payne from death row, said the evidence overwhelmingly points to Payne as the killer. Weirich’s office initially contested the intellectual disability claims, but backed off after he was found mentally disabled.

Executions of the intellectually disabled were ruled unconstitutional in 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court found they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But until Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill in May 2021 making Tennessee’s law retroactive in prohibiting the execution of the intellectually disabled, Tennessee had no mechanism for an inmate to reopen a case to press an intellectual disability claim. Payne’s lawyers have said the law was critical in freeing Payne from death row.

The case drew national attention from anti-death-penalty activists and included the involvement of the Innocence Project, which argues for the use of DNA testing in cases claiming wrongful conviction. DNA tests failed to exonerate Payne, but his lawyers say they will keep fighting to prove his innocence.

“Mr. Payne acts like an innocent man because he is an innocent man,” said Henry, his lawyer. “One day is too long to serve in prison for a crime you didn’t commit.”


Texas
Judge rules as unconstitutional a law that erodes city regulations
HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas judge ruled Wednesday that a new law eroding the power of the state’s Democratic-led cities to impose local regulations on everything from tenant evictions to employee sick leave is unconstitutional and cannot take effect.

The decision by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Austin, an elected Democrat, is a significant win for progressive leaders in Texas’ biggest cities that want to be able to represent their communities. Critics of the law say it would have taken power from local government and denounced it as “The Death Star.” Texas and its major cities join battles that have flared nationwide over statehouses flexing authority over municipalities.

“That’s tremendous victory for the people in this city because it allows the local leadership to represent the Houstonians that we have an obligation to serve,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a news conference following the ruling.

The state immediately appealed the ruling, according to the Texas attorney general’s office.

“This will stay the effect of the court’s declaration pending appeal,” the office said in a statement to The Associated Press, adding that the law would still go into effect on Friday as scheduled.

The case will head to the Texas Supreme Court, which is made up entirely of Republican judges.

Republicans muscled the law through the GOP-controlled Legislature over intense opposition from Democrats, labor groups and city leaders. Supporters said the law was needed to preserve Texas’ reputation as a friendly business climate and that a patchwork of ordinances that differ from city to city created unnecessary red tape.

A particularly damaging part of the law, critics argued, was that its full impact was unclear. But they also seized on specific examples, including repeated reminders during a historic summer heat wave that the law would eliminate water breaks at mandatory intervals for outdoor workers. Experts, however, say the law’s effects may be more complicated.

Hours before the ruling, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott took to social media to defend the law.

“Texas small businesses are the backbone of our economy,” Abbott said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “Burdensome regulations are an obstacle to their success. I signed HB2127 to cut red tape & help businesses thrive.”


Maine
Settlement reached in ACLU  lawsuit over public defenders
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine has obtained a settlement over the failure of the state’s public defender system with a state agency’s commitment to press for more funding and additional public defender offices, in addition to charting a path forward.

The settlement of the lawsuit builds on previous successes with the opening of the first public defender office, improved hourly wages for private attorneys serving indigent clients and the hiring of a staffer to oversee attorney training and supervision.

“There is no quick fix or single solution to the current and future challenges to Maine’s indigent criminal defense system. The proposed settlement provides meaningful short and long-term reforms,” the parties said in the proposed settlement agreement.

The settlement must be approved by a judge.

Samuel Crankshaw, spokesperson for the ACLU of Maine, said he couldn’t comment on the settlement because it hasn’t been approved by a judge. But he said Wednesday the ACLU is happy to play a role in changing the current system that has denied “countless” low-income Mainers their Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel.

“We are proud to advance this issue in Maine because effective legal representation is not a luxury for the rich — it’s a right guaranteed to us all,” he said.

Neither the state attorney general’s office nor the director of the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services had comment Wednesday on the settlement, dated Aug. 21. The lawsuit was filed in March 2022.

A judge previously granted class status to the lawsuit against the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services that cited a failure to train, supervise and adequately fund a system to ensure the constitutional right to effective counsel for Mainers.

Before the hiring of five public defenders last year and an additional 10 public defenders included in this year’s state budget, Maine was the only state without a public defender’s office for people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer.

The state had relied solely on private attorneys who were reimbursed by the state to handle such cases, and the number of lawyers willing to take court-appointed cases has been declining in recent years, creating a backlog.