Jury was not tampered with during trial, Murdaugh juror says

HAMPTON COUNTY, S.C. (WSAV) — It was the local murder trial that made national and international news.

You couldn't go anywhere without hearing more about the Alex Murdaugh case. Did he kill his wife Maggie and son Paul and what would the jury say?

In the end he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a jury.

Now one of those jurors, Amie Williams, has written about her experience in the jury box. "A Long Road to Justice" said a lot about the claims that the jury was "tampered with" before the decision was made.

"I was thinking when they were going through the evidence, this is a lot," said Williams. "Trying to put everything together. But then as things progressed, it made more sense and as it was making more sense, as horrible as it was it got a little easier to see once you could see clearly what was happening."

Williams also said that the juror who said she was influenced doesn't make sense.

"I understand that there was one juror out of the 12 that says that she was influenced," Williams said. "But I don't understand that part at all. But we were polled.  Okay. I have to go back to that. We were polled and you said you made this decision of your own free will. I don't think our verdict should be thrown out."

One of the keys to the case in Williams' mind was early one, she said, when the audio of Alex Murdaugh's 911 call was played for the court.

"When you make a 911 call, they're trying to get you the help you need," said Williams. "You're trying to get the help you're you need because of what's happening. For him to give them suspects and a suspect or suspects and a motive was kind of crazy to me."

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WSAV asked her how much she looked at Murdaugh during the trial.

"I tried not to," Williams said. "I looked sometimes. But when he really started the waterfalls crying and all that, I just turned my head because it was, I felt it was... it was too much. It was just too much."

In response, we asked her if she felt like he was performing. She said yes.

"Yes, I did," Williams said. "He just couldn't make sense of the timeline after that. Nothing he said made sense. It did not click. It was obvious to me than that, no, you did it "

Many people voiced concerns that the jury came back too quickly with the verdict.

"Andrew, six weeks (of testimony)," Williams said. "I mean, all that evidence and the prosecution did a good job breaking down the evidence and the witness testimony, they were so courageous, and they were believable. I feel they had no reason to lie."

Williams talked in depth about the deliberations in the jury room.

"We did the initial vote just to see where we were," Williams said. "Nobody knew who voted what because we just wrote yes or no down on a piece of paper. From there we were like, okay, let's open the floor for questions.  And there were a lot of questions. We watched some video clips. We looked at certain pieces of evidence for whatever the questions were."

She told WSAV that Clerk of Court Becky Hill never made her feel pressured and that she doesn't see how Hill could've convinced 12 people to change their decision.

"I mean, unless she had a magic potion or a wand, or maybe she could twitch her nose like bewitched, I don't know," Williams said. "But I just couldn't see it happen happening. You know? I was like, That's insane. I was not influenced, not by her anyway, but by the evidence and witness testimony."

In the end, when WSAV asked Williams if she believed Murdaugh was the killer, she said she did.

"And I still would have come to the same decision even if the death penalty was on the table," Willaims said. 

The South Carolina Supreme Court is expected to decide if there is enough evidence of potential tampering to get Alex Murdaugh a new trial in the next few months.

Williams is donating the majority of her proceeds from the book to her non-profit "Sanctuary House" a proposed long-term shelter for abused and battered women.

She will be holding book signings Dec. 5 at the Colleton Coffee Shop in Walterboro at 5 p.m., and Dec. 6 at Mcintosh Book Shoppe on East Bay Street.


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