Judge rejects Alex Murdaugh bid to make clerk pay legal fees
A federal judge refused to make former clerk Becky Hill cover Alex Murdaugh’s roughly $600,000 trial bill, saying he would have spent it anyway.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel refused to make former Colleton County Clerk of Court Mary Rebecca Hill pay Alex Murdaugh’s roughly $600,000 in legal fees from his first trial. Gergel found that Murdaugh could not shift that cost to Hill because he would have needed a defense regardless of her later misconduct.
Gergel dismissed Murdaugh’s lawsuit for lack of standing, concluding there was no causal connection between the defense bill and Hill’s conduct. Hill did not investigate Murdaugh or pursue justice against him, so she could not be made responsible for the price of his criminal defense.
Murdaugh’s fee fight grew out of the 2023 murder trial that ended with his conviction in March 2023 for killing his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh. In May 2026, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned those murder convictions after finding that Hill’s influence over the jury had tainted the trial.
In December 2025, she pleaded guilty in South Carolina state court in St. Matthews to perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office after admitting she showed sealed court exhibits to a reporter and lied about it in court.
Gergel’s ruling, issued Wednesday, left Murdaugh without the reimbursement he sought and without a finding that Hill should absorb the cost of his first defense. The federal lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, and Murdaugh’s defense team has already filed a notice of appeal.
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