← The Trial: USA
The Trial: USA
Murdaugh Wife And Son Murder Verdict Tossed Out: What Went Wrong And What’s Coming
00:38:19
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- [00:03]
James Lockemy
The crime Desk Arresting Podcasts
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Kayla Brantley
a fatal boating accident, a housekeeper's mysterious death, millions in embezzled funds, a staged assisted suicide plot and a double homicide followed by a messy cover up. It was mayhem over two year period for the prominent, wealthy Murdoch family in the low country of South Carolina beginning in 2019 when the eldest son Paul allegedly caused the death of 19 year old Mallory beach when he drunkenly crashed a boat while ferrying around a group of close friends. Paul later became a victim himself when he and his mother Maggie were fatally shot on their sprawling property. At the center of the tangled legal controversy is Alec Murdoch, a lawyer whose 2023 conviction for killing his son Paul and wife Maggie was overturned by South Carolina's highest court last week based on the conduct of the court clerk at his trial. The high court found that the clerk, Rebecca Hill, made comments to jurors that were presumed under the law to be prejudicial. Since Murdoch was denied a fair trial, he's now entitled to a new one. As the South Carolina Supreme Court wrote in its decision, Hill clearly advised the jurors to find Murdoch and the evidence he presented not credible and essentially urged them to render a guilty verdict. The Post trial record also shows Hill was focused on gathering material for a tell all she planned to write when the case ended. Hill, in fact, did release behind the Doors of justice the Murdoch murders six months after the trial ended, but it later was pulled from circulation. The book raised questions about her behavior at trial and also contained a plagiarized passage. Hill discussed using her book earnings to buy a lake house, one colleague testified. At a 2024 hearing, Murdoch's defense team argued that Hill wanted a guilty verdict to boost potential book sales. All of this amounted to an appalling breach of the public trust. It undid years of work by investigators, defense lawyers and court staff. It was also just the latest twist in a strange chronicle of crime and deceit that has captivated the country.
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Interviewer
We have a legal expert with us
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Kayla Brantley
today to discuss the issues and the impact of the Supreme Court's decision. We'll also talk about to expect next as Murdoch awaits his retrial. I'm Kayla Brantley. This is the Trial usa. We'll be back in a moment.
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Interviewer
I'm joined by James Lockemy, a former
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Kayla Brantley
chief judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. He previously served as a trial court judge, was a South Carolina state legislator, and he's also a retired army colonel who served more than 40 years in the military. Judge Lockmy is now in private practice focused on mediation, arbitration and litigation. Thank you for your military service, Judge Laukami. And thank you for joining me.
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James Lockemy
Good to be here with you.
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Kayla Brantley
I'd like to start by hearing your
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Interviewer
reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in
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Kayla Brantley
the Alec Murdoch murder case last week.
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Interviewer
It's a case that has brought so much attention to the court system in
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Kayla Brantley
South Carolina, where you've spent much of your career, when what was first your
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Interviewer
reaction when the court overturned the ruling and then the reaction from the legal
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Kayla Brantley
community in South Carolina?
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James Lockemy
Well, I'm not sure I'm a barometer of the legal community. I didn't do an assessment or poll or anything of that nature. I have read the opinion of the Supreme Court and Supreme Court made a decision that they feel correctly speaks the law of not only our state, but of the nation, because it based this decision on a United States Supreme Court case of remmer and the facts of this particular case. So when you say reaction, my reaction is Supreme Court of our state deliberated, heard the arguments of all sides and applied the law as they saw it should be applied and analyzed it and
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Interviewer
made a decision and there will be a retrial potentially by the end of the year.
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Kayla Brantley
They said that they want to move very fast.
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Interviewer
The Attorney General, Alan Wilson, he may seek the death penalty. Do you have a sense of whether
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Kayla Brantley
the retrial will play out differently from
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Interviewer
the initial trial, especially if there's a death penalty proceeding?
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James Lockemy
Well, who knows the retrial, of course, you know, one would think, well, they'll just do the same thing they've done before. But the Supreme Court made a couple of comments in addition to stating that the actions of the clerk were such, and you apply the Rimmer decision, that it tipped the scales of justice unfairly and therefore the defendant was entitled to a new trial. It didn't do an advisory opinion. Since the days of John Marshall, since the beginnings of our country, our courts have decided that they don't do advisory opinions. So our Supreme Court didn't say that in the new trial, all the evidence in the first trial will be admissible in the second trial. That's going to be up to the trial judge. The trial judge, whomever he or she is, will evaluate the evidence, evaluate, see if any proposed introduction of evidence complies with the rules and it does allow it in. If it doesn't not allow it in, you can't just replay all the first trial. I'm sure there's going to be different issues that come, different methods of addressing arguments which may persuade a judge one way or the other. In the new trial, the court did comment about some of the financial stuff that was in the first trial, that although the court says it's not commenting on whether any or all of it is admissible in the second trial, it did give an example of how a judge should weigh and through the rules of evidence, whether or not admitting certain things that have tangential connection to the allegations of murder, whether or not they're admissible. We have a rule called 404 that says that sometimes other bad acts of an individual who's charged with a crime can be admitted if those bad acts tend to prove motive or lack of accident or intent or things of our scheme or plan. So a trial judge will look at all that and determine that. In addition, there's 403 where even though something may be relevant, its relevance is totally outweighed by its prejudicial value. And a trial judge would weigh those things. So I'm sure whomever tries this next case, whichever judge in our state, we have an outstanding group of trial judges in South Carolina. I'm very proud that for 18 years I was one of those judges that whomever tries it will look at the evidence, apply it properly, and make appropriate decisions.
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Interviewer
And what are some general challenges of retrying a criminal case? One for any case, but then one that has been so high profile like this. What are some challenges that come when
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Kayla Brantley
you go back into the courtroom?
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James Lockemy
Well, both sides now know some of the strategies of the other side. Criminal court is really different than civil court. In civil court, you have depositions and you have all kinds of discovery. So that once you have a civil court, When I say civil court, I mean traffic accident, a contract dispute, a business dispute. By the time that gets to trial, both sides generally know everything about the other side's case. A criminal court, there's things that neither the defense knows about the state's case. As far as all the witnesses are going to call, and the state doesn't know that any of the witnesses that the defendant is going to call or whether the defendant is going testify or not. For example, the defendant may or may not testify, depending on what the defense determines is appropriate, what the defendant determines he wants to do in the second trial. So there are many differences there. And it could be a totally different trial with different evidence. Not different evidence, but evidence that may have been introduced in the first trial, may not be introduced, or may not be ruled admissible in the second trial. Who knows, depending on what evidence is presented.
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Interviewer
Yeah. And we are expecting, you know, some new evidence that we've never seen before
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Kayla Brantley
coming into this trial.
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Interviewer
There were reports of some DNA that
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Kayla Brantley
we hadn't had before.
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Interviewer
So we are expecting some new information.
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James Lockemy
By the way, did you follow the first trial?
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
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James Lockemy
It was amazing. The trial judge is a friend of mine, Very good, outstanding jurist. And he taught at the law school, and I was asked to help out in his class while he was doing the trial. And although I didn't watch the whole trial, I watched only a small portion of it while we're doing his class. Sometimes to use an example of trial advocacy on both sides, because you had good lawyers on both sides handling the case.
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Kayla Brantley
Oh, wow.
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Interviewer
That's such an interesting connection, especially in that legal community. In South Carolina. I do want to ask about the court clerk, Rebecca Hill. She clearly breached protocol.
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Kayla Brantley
What type of behavior is expected of a clerk of the court, and what
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Interviewer
does it take to maintain jury integrity at trial?
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James Lockemy
In South Carolina, most people would think the term clerk doesn't signify authority, power, and all. But in our state, each county has a clerk of court, and that person's elected by the people of that county, and that clerk of court is in charge of the courthouse. There's a specific Statute that gives the clerk the power as far as to have a lot of control over the courthouse where the trials are. And also the clerk is the administrative person in charge of trials. And in our state, our judges travel throughout the state. So on many occasions, you have judges coming into a county who are new to that county, who may have never tried a case in that county, or if they did, it was years ago, and travel back and forth. But that clerk is a continuity there. And that clerk follows generally the rules and procedures that are followed throughout our state. And the clerk is in charge of arranging to get the jury there to arrange for the. The initial selection of who the jury, what the jury, who they're going to be involved, usually 150, 200 people that are called, from which you then select your petty juries or your grand juries. And that clerk calls them through a process. It used to be, actually 25 years ago, it used to be that you had a big bin with names and capsules, and the clerk would get a blind person or a child or something like that and just pick names until you got 150 or 200. And then at the time of trial from that group of jurors, once you started a trial, you would then ask the judge asked all the questions. In our state, the lawyers are not permitted unless the judge consents to ask questions of the jurors. The judge asks all the questions. Many times lawyers submits questions to the judge, and he or she then will allow them or not allow them, and then ask them for the lawyers. But after all that's done, and you then find the group of jurors from the massive group that came, the group that are qualified. Then once you have those group that are qualified, that's qualified from there, you then select at random someone in a criminal case, you select their name from that group, and then they walk forward. And when they walk forward, then the state says, you know, yes, present the juror or excuse the juror. And each side gets so many strikes. And then the defense says, seat the juror or excuse the juror. Well, the clerk is in charge of getting all those people there. The clerk is in charge of drawing, getting the names of the jurors drawn at random from what we call the jury of an eye. Have them come up and then stand in front of the lawyers, where you then end up with them getting on the jury panel. And of course, you have 12 jurors. And then the judge will decide whether to have one alternate, two alternates, three or four or five, depending on the length of the trial, the judge may have more alternates than normal because you may lose jurors and you must have a jury of 12 to deliberate to decide the case. But then once that jury is in power, once you have those 12 jurors and the number of alternates that have been selected, then the clerk, through bailiffs that the clerk has basically hired and make a decision to hire in most counties. Some counties may have county council do it, but because they're the ones who are providing the funds. But the clerk has part time people who work many times only when you have trial. Sometimes they work beyond that, but each county is different. The judge depends upon the clerk to administer the jury, to make sure the bailiffs and the clerk gets the jurors back to a room. If the jurors are going to have lunch, the clerk is involved in getting the lunch for the jury and giving it to the jury. The Bayless has sworn not to communicate anything about the trial to the jury, not to communicate anything about evidence submitted that the jury didn't hear or to say anything improperly to the jury. And so the clerk has a lot of power and a lot of authority and a lot of responsibility for those jurors once that trial begins. And here, as both the trial judge had heard the initial motion for a new trial as well as the Supreme Court, they felt like not only did the clerk in this case maybe put her fingers on the scales of justice, tipping it unfairly one side, but also may have had that siren call of celebrity as it was, and wanting a book, and in doing so may have done some things improperly.
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Interviewer
Yes, and that actually led me right to my next question. You said that the clerk has to swear in, to not impede in anything, to not discuss.
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James Lockemy
And the judge instructs the jury, the judge instructs the jury that during the course of this trial, you're to make your decision based on evidence you hear in the courtroom, not on anything else. And many times, if it's going to be a highly publicized thing, the judge will instruct the jury, don't read newspapers, don't look at news on TV or radio or any other source, social media, to make sure that all you hear about this case is what you hear in the courtroom. And the judge will admonish the jury that if you do hear something somewhere, that you should let the court know about it and let the court inquire and let both sides know what's been heard to see if that will affect you as far as your decision because you want. You want a decision by a jury that's basing its decision on the. On what they heard in the courtroom. Kayla, the trial of a criminal case is two prong in the sense that you have two judges. The jury are the judges of the facts. If you have two people saying totally different things, say in a simple matter of traffic matter, who ran the red light? You may have one witness said the light was green. You may have another witness as the light was red and that someone ran the light. Other, no, they didn't. It was green. Well, the jurors decide who they believe. You have many times where you have contradictory evidence and differing comments from different people. The judge is not the one to decide. That's up to the jury. The jury also makes decisions on evidence they hear and draw conclusions from the facts they hear. And the judge tells the jury this. The judge says, ladies and the jury, you are the triers of fact. You will decide. You will decide what the facts are from the evidence you hear. Your job is to make a decision on the facts. Not my job. I'm a judge. I'm here sort of the gatekeeper. I'm here to manage matters, to make sure things are fair. I will make some decisions on what is. Under the rules, you can hear, can't hear. And it doesn't mean I'm trying to hide something from you. It just means that in a fair situation, you want to make sure only appropriate things are before you. For example, if someone comes in and said, John Jones said so and so. And number one, no one knows who John Jones is, and John Jones is not here to say he did or didn't say it. So you don't allow that as hearsay because there's so many problems with that about whether it is or is not true. So a judge has to make decisions there. But once the jury hears all the evidence, they decide the facts. Then at the conclusion of the trial, the judge then said, all right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've heard this evidence say the crime is burglary. Ladies and gentlemen, jury, you've heard this evidence. Now you decide the facts. But here's the law. The law is to commit the crime of burglary. Say it's a home. Burglary is for a person to enter the home of another without consent, with the intent to commit a crime therein. Now, burglary first may be nighttime or when someone's there or something, or burglary second may be daytime or business building, but it's to enter the home of another without consent, with the intent to commit a crime therein. Now, ladies and the jury, from the evidence that you've heard, if you determine that that occurred, then it's your duty to make your decision on the verdict. You must follow the law as I give it to you. In other words, you're under oath as jurors, that you follow the law as the judge instructs you, but you decide what the facts are.
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Interviewer
Absolutely. And you did mention how the judge will instruct a jury not to look at any newspapers or read anything outside of this case.
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Kayla Brantley
But I can only imagine how difficult
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Interviewer
that is unless the jury is sequestered. You have technology making it harder to protect the sitting juries. And big cases get a lot of media attention, and especially a case like the Murdoch murders.
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Kayla Brantley
You have news alerts popping up on
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Interviewer
people's phones and emails landing in inboxes. So how can a judge really be so sure that the jury, unless of course, they are sequestered, has not had any outside influence, especially in this technology age?
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James Lockemy
Well, two or three things you do as a judge, of course, you put the jurors under oath. Once that jury is impaneled, then they get an oath. In fact, you've heard the term double jeopardy. And if a person is on trial for something, you can't try them second time if they've been found not guilty or something of that nature. So once that jury is in panel, that's when jeopardy attacks. Once they've been sworn, jeopardy attaches and the trial has begun, and you swear the jury and you tell them, the judge will tell them. Don't read anything else. Make your decision based on what you hear in the trial. And the judge could go so far as to say, your cell phones need to be turned in. You have no access to your cell phones. In the course of the trial, the judge may, like you say, if it is a highly publicized case, the judge may end up saying, ladies and the jury, I'm going to sequester in a hotel, and I've had a case or two in my career where I've actually had the TVs taken out of the hotel, rooms taken and telephones taken out because you want to provide them a comfortable place to rest and relax, but of course, would not have access. But some cases, of course, they are under oath not to do things, and you let them go home and you assume they follow their oath. For example, in the case of someone who's charged with shoplifting at a local merchandise, local store, that's not going to probably be in the paper one way or the other. It's probably not going to be on the news. People are not going to be sending a lot of social media about that. But if the juror has been someone maybe related to the individual been tried, no matter what the offense is, what minor nature of the offense, if they've got contact from anyone, they're under their oath supposed to report it to the court and then the court then determines if in fact using our law, if that is something that is to the extent is prejudiced the jury, that you can't have a fair trial, then the judge would grant a mistrial or declare have a new trial.
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Kayla Brantley
Right.
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Interviewer
So it's really kind of the merit system that you trust these jurors to report.
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James Lockemy
Yeah, you trust them. But if it's a very important case, you have to use your discretion, you have to use common sense. If it's a highly publicized thing, you're going to limit the jurors availability. Because sometimes if you're a juror and you're trying to do your best, you don't want to hear anything. You want to follow what the judge said. But if you're sitting at home and all of a sudden a news blast comes in about let's stay in the court, the jurors didn't hear this information, but here's what the state argued and the judge made this decision and the said this were motions and outside their presence. If the person's in their living room that comes across, then you don't have any control of it. That's why a judge, depending on whether he or she feels that that's going to be a situation, he then may have them sequestered.
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Kayla Brantley
We're taking a quick break after this.
- [23:47]
James Lockemy
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Jack Myers
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Jack Myers
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Jack Myers
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Tim Spengler
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- [24:41]
Interviewer
Judge Clifton Newman, he was the trial judge. He's now retired. And I understand you had a connection, you know, where you covered.
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James Lockemy
Well, I'm a colleague. We were colleagues.
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Interviewer
Well, I was curious, and this, of course, is without saying anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable with, but had Judge Newman shared anything about what it was like to oversee the case with you?
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James Lockemy
No. I guess the fact that he's done many, many trials over his life, and I've done many trials, and I know him to be a person of integrity, a very good jurist. I'm sure that he presided over that trial. No, I know he did. For allow that trial fairly and justly to all people involved.
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Interviewer
And especially in this technological age, in the courtroom, you have the bailiffs, you have the court reporters, the court clerk. How important is it for the judges
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Kayla Brantley
to be able to trust their staff like this?
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James Lockemy
Well, when you say their staff, once again, in our state, the judges travel. And so although this is the clerk, it's really the clerk staff. The judge is in charge. Of course, when that case begins, the judge is in full control. But it's not as if the staff that the judge has had with him for years and they've tried many cases together and all that, it may be a situation where this might be the first encounter or second or third they've had with each other. And the clerk is the one that's really familiar with the bailiff center in the courtroom, and the clerk staff, that's with the clerk that works the trials, and the clerk decides who will work the trial with him or her.
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Interviewer
What lessons do you feel should be taken away from this huge reversal in the Murdoch case?
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James Lockemy
When you say huge reversal, I mean it's a reversal. If you think of the wonderful play and movie A Man for All Seasons, where one asked Sir Thomas More, would you give the devil the benefit of the law? And Sir Thomas More said that this nation is a nation of laws. Our liberties, our freedoms, are protected by laws. And if we break down laws just to get to the devil, then what happens later on if the devil turns against us and we now have no laws to protect us? What the Supreme Court decided here was that looking at this, that the clerk of court once again put her fingers and weighed unfairly on the scales of justice. And that no matter how you feel about the defendant, no matter how you feel about the allegations and how horrible they are and everything, you've got to make sure that you have fairness for everyone and a fair trial. Because if you Say, don't follow the rule of law. And what the Supreme Court did, if you read the opinion they went through the Rimmer case, US Supreme Court case, and said, what do you have when you have allegations of contact and influence with jurors, you first determine the fence would then have to present that this happened, present evidence that had happened, and present us evidence that wasn't just innocuous that once it's not just innocuous contacts with the jurors and it could very well these substantive is, then the state has the burden of showing that that contact did not have any effect on the jury's verdict. Now, if, say, because of the nature of this case ends that you ended up with it going on and say, oh, it's horrible. Everything else, we need to overlook what the law is. Well, then what happens if you had a case where someone had just as many people who feel that person is innocent as they feel that person is guilty, and just as many people feeling that this was a travesty of justice for that person to be even on trial as it was on the other side, and then you end up with allegations of contact with the jury. Well, if you did this thing, you don't worry about that, then there you wouldn't worry about it when you should. So the law should apply to everyone. The law should apply regardless of the nature of the case. The law of fairness for everybody, the law of making sure that blind justice is there, that cloth is covering her eyes, and it doesn't matter who the defendant is. That person tiled to a full and fair and just trial.
- [29:02]
Interviewer
And I do wonder what. And if you have any insight into newly elected clerks and their training from the South Carolina court system on the rules and the laws that they have to follow, what that training is like.
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James Lockemy
Well, we have within South Carolina, I'm sure every state has something similar. We have the court administration. When people are elected clerks, the court administration is there to provide guidance and help about how you administer and do your jobs. In many of our counties, clerks have different duties. Some of our smaller counties, the clerks not only handle the civil cases, criminal cases, the bailiffs, the jurors and getting jurors there, making sure the jurors get paid and things of that nature for why they're there. They also handle filing of deeds and mortgages and filing of liens and filing of judgments. So they handle all the filings for the county. Some counties are really large. They have the clerk that handles the court system and then they have another person, sometimes called the registrar of mesnic advances that make sure that deeds are filed, mortgages are filed, and things of that nature. But the clerk has many, many, many duties other than just a trial. And the court administration is really good. We have very well trained and very hardworking experienced people that when the clerks get elected first time, that give them training and advice. And then the clerks have on their own an annual convention every year conference where they have educational programs. Keep them informed of what's going on. We have 46 clerks of court in South Carolina because we have 46 counties. And they are the court administration our state. And our supreme court, headed by our chief justice, is involved with administering our entire justice system through. Through the third branch of government of our state. And the court administration that is overseen by the chief justice and the supreme court provides very good training for our clerks of court.
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Interviewer
Yeah. So it seems like there's excellent training of these clerks. So is the Rebecca Hill situation an anomaly in your experience in the South Carolina court system?
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James Lockemy
Yes, very much so. Our clerks of court are hardworking people who follow the law, who do their duty. And I would not want what has been found by the court that this person did to in any way reflect negatively on the clerks of our state. They're some of the hardest working people in South Carolina. They also have a deep sense of justice and fairness. Remember, they are elected by the people from their county, and they are their citizen of their county. So the people of that county invest in that clerk the confidence that the clerk will make sure that justice is administered fairly, not only in the court system, but also when deeds have to be filed, judgments have to be filed, things have to be taken off the record and things of that nature. But our clerks in South Carolina, I did not know Ms. Hill. I'd never met her before, Never have met her before that I remember. But they are highly trained, highly skilled. But more than that, they're highly dedicated to administering justice. I have very, very, very high confidence that our trials are done fairly in this state.
- [32:31]
Interviewer
Yeah. And it seems important for a judge to have that confidence in the staff,
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James Lockemy
not only judge, for the people to have that confidence. Kayla, for you to have that confidence, you want to make sure that if you end up getting in litigation and a court in a trial, that the jury makes that decision based on the evidence presented to that jury for it to decide. You would not want someone in trying to influence the jury, because remember, not only was Ms. Heale an individual talking to the jury with an effort to influence according to what the supreme court found she was a state official, a county official, which adds more to it. And that's why you really want to make sure that you have fair trials. And I'm confident that the trials in our state are fair. But you're going to have a problem once in a while. Very rarely, thank goodness. But that's one reason why this thing is so, I guess, so highly publicized is the fact that it doesn't happen, but very, very, very rare instances.
- [33:35]
Interviewer
Do you feel like going forward now it's going to be much stricter and, you know, the vetting process is going to be much stricter than it was previously due to Ms. Hill?
- [33:46]
James Lockemy
Well, no. Once again, I think that the vetting process we have now. You mean of selecting clerks of court by the people? I think the people make their decisions based on the individual they feel can do the job, and I think they'll continue to do that. This one bad apple was removed. We got a lot of good apples, all right? And we don't need to throw out all the other apples because of that one bad apple if we should have. And I don't think there's any evidence she infected or had any type of influence upon other clerks of court. Now, I think also the people in our office that work there in Collington county, they are hardworking, and I know many of them, and I've dealt with them, and some of them testified in the motion of a new trial. They are doing their duty, and they want to make sure that justice is done. But we leave it up to the Supreme Court. You know, some group, some body, some person has got to make a decision about whether something was fair or not. And we want to make sure that it was fair. I'm sure you want to make sure that we have fair trials. We all want to make sure it's a fair trial. I mean, you can always argue all day long, oh, man, that person's guilty. But then again, if you end up just waiving everything, because if you had a vote, the vote would be people negative, that person is guilty, then you're going to end up waiving everything for other people who may not be guilty or who. There's a strong. There's strong evidence on both sides. You need a panel of jurors to decide. But I don't think the fact of what happened here is any sort of bad comment on our system. It just means that just like anything else, there's a person here and there who may not be the best person in the world and who does a bad thing here.
- [35:34]
Interviewer
And There we know that Ms. Hill was a court stenographer for many years. I'm just curious, do most clerks in the state have experience in the courtroom before they're elected?
- [35:45]
James Lockemy
Well, I don't know much about Ms. Hill's background. When you say a court stenographer, a court reporter many times would call that,
- [35:55]
Interviewer
yes, a court reporter.
- [35:56]
James Lockemy
A court reporter could be freelance. And that means that, say, if you have depositions at law offices during a suitable case where someone sued someone regarding a contract or personal injury or whatever, and you have a right to depose that person to see what they have to say, and they do it under oath, and you record it and type it up verbatim. That's what a court reporter does. They go and they take all the testimony. They. They put it in writing if you want to review it, or they give you a video of it, one or the other. So I don't know what she worked in the courtrooms or not. If she did work in the courtroom as a court reporter, that means she would be there taking down testimony that would be available for an appellate court to look at the transcript. Or sometimes people pay the court reporter to privately give them a transcript of what trans.
- [36:50]
Interviewer
But is it typical for elected clerks
- [36:52]
Kayla Brantley
to have already worked in the court
- [36:54]
Interviewer
system, or can they come from a completely different background and then get elected
- [36:59]
James Lockemy
as the people of the county choose the clerk of court. And although I think many, many times that clerk is chosen from someone who's worked in the court system within the clerk's office for a while and the other clerk is retired, or it could be from someone who's had experience and feel they could do the job better. But the people of the county, if they choose to do so, they can elect someone because they want a clean slate or something who's not been involved in the court system. But court reporters are eligible to run. Police officers are eligible run, podcasters eligible run for clerk of court.
- [37:37]
Interviewer
Good to know. Maybe there's a different career in my future.
- [37:42]
James Lockemy
As long as you live in the county and you. You're a certain age, you can do it.
- [37:46]
Interviewer
Do you have any final thoughts as an observer with your expertise on how this court process has played out?
- [37:53]
James Lockemy
You know, our Constitution in its preamble says that we, the people of the United States, ought to form a more perfect union. And then the second thing it says, and to ensure justice, that the second most important thing in the preamble, after you get, before you get to things of the nature of domestic tranquility, secure the blessings of Liberty, you got that? It's going to provide justice, enable justice in our country. And justice is not just a trial. In the history of our country, we've had means for people to review what happened at the trial to make sure initially it was a king or a queen or monarch that would review what happened to see if something was unfair. You should get another opportunity. But over time, in our country, we don't do kings, we don't do queens, we don't do monarchs. We developed a system of appeals so that courts look at what happened at a trial to make sure things were done fairly and that justice was served. This is not just a matter of a case of one person charged with a crime and the sad death of two individuals. That's very sad. It's a crime against society. And society needs to make sure it has a system that applies regardless of what occurred, whether it's this individual, these sad victims, or whether other people. And our Supreme Court analyzed this case very, very well, very scholarly, judicially, legally, and looked at the case law, looked at the facts that everyone pretty much agreed to and said based on the United Supreme Court and Rimmer View United States and the standards we have. If you look at this, we don't look at who's involved. You don't look at the character of the individual involved. You look at the law and under the law. In this particular case, our Supreme Court decided that the scales of justice were tipped unfairly for one side here, the state. And for that reason, it doesn't say, Mr. Murdoch, you're now innocent. They said, no, let's just redo and have another trial. I know it costs a lot of money and the Supreme Court realized that it is a very expensive situation. But justice and the law and the rule of law is more important than any amount of money to make sure we all have a justice system in this country and that everybody is entitled to a fair trial.
- [40:23]
Interviewer
Well, Judge Lakmi, thank you so much. I know you're very busy, so we
- [40:27]
Kayla Brantley
absolutely appreciate your time.
- [40:30]
Interviewer
So that's it for today.
- [40:31]
Podcast Host
We'll be back with a new episode next Wednesday. The Trial USA is part of the Crime Desk. Subscribers can listen ad free, get early access to new shows, full access to the archive and the member only podcast the trial. Plus visit thecrimedesk.com to find out more. A link is in the Show Notes. Follow us on TikTok at the crime Desk and on Instagram at the Trial Pod. Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or send us a voice note on WhatsApp 447-796-57512 start your message with the word.
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