0 morning, joe scarborough? >> i wanted to go to the rev, he's on fire today. the commissioner rev, come on, you know, preacher's kids can be tough, right? a lot of pressur but a carpenter and a preacher, i don't know how he did it. >> that's a rough combination, we actually had a candidate quoting the bible this morning. we're going to have a great day deacon scarborough. sfwr amen, reverend sharpton. that does it for us this morning, lindsey reiser picks up the coverage right now. it's 10:00 a.m. in new york, i'm lindsey reiser. right now all eyes are on this courtroom in south carolina as the closely watched double murder trial of alex murdaugh s its final stages. the defense has begun its closing arguments just after a juror was dismissed. let's listen. >> alex murdaugh innocent of these charges and frankly, as he explained that's not natural when you hear on the news that a crime has occurred, an arrest has been made, you feel a little bit relieved, thank god they caught him, and frankly, i would not be surprised if some amongst you when you read in the paper that alex murdaugh was charged with the murder of his wife and son that you thought, oh, good, they got him, but those opinions and each of you when you filled out your questionnaire agreed and affirmed that you would leave those at the door of the courthouse and that you would decide this case solely on the evidence, and that's what the law requires. and when we began, the law also requires you to presume him innocent of these charges. now, i've been doing this a long, long time, and up until the advent of instant replay in sports, it's been very difficult to explain just how to do that to jurors, how jurors can apply this presumption of innocence, and if you're not as interested in sports i apologize for this analogy, but the analogy is the incident replay, whether you're a clemson fan or georgia fan, that on a saturday afternoon there's a play called on the field, and then it's reviewed, and under the rules, the call on the field stands unless there's visual, incontrovertible evidence that the call on the field was wrong. we see that every weekend in fall sports. here the call on the field is that alex murdaugh is innocent, innocent of these charges. that's what the law requires and that unless and until the state proves his guilt to each one of you individually, voting individually, proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then that presumption of innocence stays with him. you're not being tasked here to give your opinion in this trial. you're being tasked to apply the constitution, the bedrock are principles that protect us all from a government, those bedrock principles are first you get tried by a jury of your peers. second, that the jury of your peers began with presuming you innocent, and third, that you will remain innocent until the government, if they can, proves to you individually in your mind that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. now, the judge will give you jury instructions on what that means beyond a reasonable doubt. but the definition has been defined that reasonable doubt is doubt that would cause a reasonable person to hesitate when making an important decision in their personal affairs such as to buy a house, get married, any consequential decision. and you will be making -- you will be making when you get this case probably later this afternoon, you'll be making one of the most consequential decisions that you will have ever made in your life, i suspect. i don't know all of your backgrounds, but it will be a very consequential decision. and if the proof that the state has put before you causes you to hesitate when you go to fill out that vote as you're deliberating in your jury room, each of you will have a vote, and you will have the right to vote guilty or not guilty, and each of you will write it out, and if there's any reasonable calls for you to hesitate to write guilty, then the law requires you to write not guilty. this burden of proof that we have, many of you may have had experience with civil cases, and in civil cases the burden of proof is much lower and is called by a preponderance of the evidence, and you may have seen lawyers or judges or watched on tv as they -- as they give a visual image of lady justice who's blind, who's blindfolded so she's not biased from one side or the other, and there's scales on lady justice, and those scales are the scales of justice, and in a civil case if one party proves their case by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning ever so slightly tilt those scales in their favor, then they're entitled to the verdict. there's another heightened level of burden of proof in a civil case called by clear and convincing evidence, and the law requires things like to prove fraud or some intentional acts, you have to prove by clear and convincing evidence, and that's an intermediate level of proof, and so it's not just tilt the scales ever so slightly in the favor of the party that prevails but you have to get sort of three-quarters of the way there. but now proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest standard of proof the law recognizes, and it is you have to tilt the scales all the way to one side in order for the state to meet their burden. a little bit about the verdict. you will have an option of guilty or not guilty, my friend over here is a -- he travels a lot. he's been to a lot of countries, and he frequently -- he recently returned from scotland where he attended a jury trial in scotland. it's much like this, except the lawyers wear a wig, and i might benefit from something like that but in scotland it's about the same until it gets time for the verdict in the criminal case. and the jury in scotland where we derive our laws from, they are given three options. one option is guilty, second option is not guilty, and the third option is not proven. not proven. now here in america, we have combined the verdict of innocent and not proven into one of not guilty. and so when you go to render your verdict, if it's a verdict of not guilty, it's either you concluded that the defendant is innocent of the charges or that the government has not met their burden of proof, their heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. and one of the reasons that defendants are presumed innocent and that government has such a high burden is because in criminal cases, the defendant really doesn't have the ability, doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the lawful authority to execute search warrants, subpoena documents, to prove his or her innocence, and so a defendant cannot secure a crime scene, cannot lift a crime scene for fingerprints, shoe wear impressions, cannot secure telephones and get electronic data in the course of an investigation, so the defendant is limited on what they can do. in this case on june 7th, 2021, alex murdaugh called 911, and officer deputy green and then follow the other deputies rolled up on the scene, and he is standing on his property. his wife and son lie dead in a pool of blood each. he's within yards of him, and he just put a shotgun down. he had just put a shotgun down. what would that look like 90 out of 100 cases when an officer rolls up, it would look like the person who had the shot gun and two dead bodies may have done it. probably have done it, certainly is someone who should be strongly considered and all the officers in this case told you that. the deputy said yeah, alex murdaugh was a suspect, but there were a lot of suspects out there. everybody was a suspect. fair enough. the agent owen said we had a circle, investigative circle, and it starts with the immediate family members, particularly if they found the deceased, the victims, so he's in the circle by virtue of calling 911 and that's fair enough. but what doesn't strike us as fair is that the next morning on june the 8th after the gruesome murders of maggie and paul, this is what is issued a joint press release, s.l.e.d. that says at this time there's no danger to the public. at this time there's no danger to the public. we have two people who have been executed, within -- was it 100 yards, 200 yards from moselle road. they've been slaughtered, at this time there's no danger to the public? does that tell you that on june 8th law enforcement had decided it had to be alex murdaugh? it's a fair question for you to ask yourselves. it's a question that's not been fairly answered in this trial. but we know from june 7 to june 8, alex is a suspect, and he's in the circle, and from that day forward, he is at the mercy, he is at the mercy of the ability of s.l.e.d. to exclude him from that circle. they have the ability to do the forensic work. they have the ability to interview witnesses, and they have the ability to gather electronic data. and we believe that we've shown conclusively that s.l.e.d. failed miserably in investigating this case. and had they done a competent job that alex would have been excluded from that circle a year ago, two years ago, but he would have been excluded. what did you hear from the witness stand? you hear from chief barry mccroy. i didn't know chief mccroy until i got involved in this case, but his reputation is outstanding. and he's a consummate professional, and he explained that when he got there he was concerned that cars would be pulling up, and there's some tire tracks that were not being protected. and that they could have evidentiary value. and then you heard from mark ball who had a conversation with sheriff hill who's another fine public servant here, and he also -- we've got to stop cars from coming in here to preserve these tire impressions. and it was not done. it was not done. captain chapman testified about seeing other sets of tire tracks. if you had came in off moselle road, you probably saw where deputy green's vehicle had stopped right at the kennels, but then on the other side where you saw that alex was parked and pacing on some of these videos, that's where captain chapman had talked about seeing tire tracks, and he tried to track them. s.l.e.d. was coming on. it was like a trail to nowhere. it was a trail to nowhere. deputy rutland talked about seeing hair in maggie's hands, you'll recall. you didn't hear anything about the hair in maggie's hands from that moment forward. was it tested? was it sent off for analysis? there was no evidence of what, if anything happened to the hair in maggie's hands. was it as a result of a struggle with her assailant? was it her own hair? i mean, we don't know the answer to that. we know that failed to fake fingerprints from the feed row, and they should have. they failed to properly take footwear impressions from the feed room or at the apron right outside the feed room, and i think that's -- i mean, i don't think that's uncontradicted. the agent worley who -- doing the best she can, did not go there to document footwear impressions, did not do that. you heard from our expert what is required, and i believe dr. kinsey also agreed it was not done. and both -- now, i'll get to the shot angles in a little bit, but both dr. kinsey and mr. palmback have this murder standing on the concrete, standing on the concrete, whether one foot's in, one foot's out, both feet are in, but there should have been footwear impressions, but we'll never know because it was not preserved. it was not taken. the thing that has baffled us, has completely baffled us is why did they never take dna samples off of maggie's clothes? her dress. why did they never take dna samples off paul's clothes. they never did. they never did, and we asked their investigator, why didn't you? that's somebody else's job. that's somebody else's job. it was never done, but you know whose clothing they took dna off of extensively? alex. and you heard agent zapota talk about all the different grids on her shirt where dna samples were taken. was alex assaulted on june the 7th? no, he wasn't assaulted. was alex wrestling with the say -- assailant on june the 7th? there's no evidence of that. so why are they taking dna evidence off of alex's clothing in june of 2021? and there's only one reason, and it goes back to this right here. there was only one reason, only one reason is that they had decided that, unless we find somebody else, it's going to be alex. unless we find somebody else, it's going to be alex. the -- and i'll get into more detail about maggie's phone and maggie's phone was not secured properly. maggie's phone was -- let me just go right into it. maggie's phone was found on the side of the road in the morning or early afternoon on june th 8th. whoever killed her threw that phone on the side of the road without a doubt, without a doubt. alec from the get-go has said you get maggie's phone, you get my phone, and you get my onstar data, and you will not see my car traveling down the road with maggie's phone because it did not happen. it could not happen. have you gotten it yet, no, we've not. we sent the black box from on the -- on the chevy to the fbi, it was a new model. turns out the data's encrypted and so we haven't got it yet. well, what about general motors? i'll do what i have to do, whatever i can do, and we're looking into it. we're looking into it. what we learned during this trial is, sure, s.l.e.d. sent a subpoena via fax machine to somebody in detroit, i believe, and whoever got it in detroit, whether there was a number off, i have no idea what the reason was, but we do know the initial response we don't have anything. we don't have any onstar data that you're looking for. there's no indication that s.l.e.d. followed up with a phone call. there's no indication s.l.e.d. followed up with a letter. there's no indication s.l.e.d. did anything other than put it in a file. put the response in a file, and that was it. that was it, ladies and gentlemen, until somebody watching this trial somewhere contacted somebody at general motors and said why don't you guys cooperate with the fbi and s.l.e.d. on this investigation. what are you talking about? so friday, you know, sometime in the last six weeks, l and behold here comes all the onstar data that you got to see. and that would be great. that would be great, but for the fact that when they seized maggie's phone, it had -- they put it in airplane mode, they knew how to put it in airplane mode. excuse me, i'm losing my voice. i need a drink of water, i apologize. they put it in airplane mode, but what you'll see, i got a photograph is the location services were still on meaning still pinging off gps satellites, and the phones don't hold that much memory. they hold a lot of data as we have learned, but they don't hold that much memory, and it writes over itself, and for gps location services, the ping points that we see from paul's phone on all that data, that would have been on maggie's phone for the 7th, but for the fact that it wasn't -- it wasn't extracted until sometime in june 16, i think that's the date, but if i'm wrong, i apologize, but it's around the middle of june. and that pinging information that we see on paul's phone from maggie's phone, it goes back to like june the 9th. a lot of good that does. a lot of good that does. we don't have it. we would have had it had they extracted it earlier. we didn't have an updated upgraded software that would read it. took us a while to get it. i don't know why it took them a while to get it. there's really no explanation about that. but you heard about fair day bags, put it in the fair day bag so it's not pinging against satellites, not overriding. they didn't do that, and it's lost. had they done it, i hope we wouldn't be here. i hope because i know it would say -- because we have enough evidence in the record and we have to go around our elbow to get to our thumb to get there, but there is sufficient evidence in the record to show alex murdaugh was not driving down moselle road with maggie's phone in the car and tossed it at whatever time. i don't know what time they think it was tossed. that would have gotten him out of the circle i would hope but probably not because they've been so focused on him. now, as i mentioned, alec asked multiple times, i think the testimony was five times, agent owen, agent owen, you know, if you get this data it will show i wasn't there. and you know we were -- we didn't learn why they didn't get it off alec's phone until very recently. you'll remember on june 10th, he gave s.l.e.d. his phone, yeah, you can copy it. please copy it because it will show that i wasn't driving -- my phone was not with maggie's phone at any point in time going down the road and i did what i said i did. well, they did extract it, but what we've learned the extraction was a superficial extraction, not because alec requested it, that's just what they did, said a logical surface extraction. they didn't go in and pull out any gps pinging data, like you see on paul's phone. they didn't get it off alec's. now, if alec had not made those requests to owen -- and they are disputing that -- there's one thing you can be 100% sure of is they would have called detective owen up here on the witness stand during their rebuttal case to say, no, he lied. he didn't ask that of me. they got sheriff smalls in here to say i didn't give him permission to put a blue light in his car. they came and challenged whether he had authority from the sheriff or maybe a deputy sheriff to put a blue light in his car. they didn't contradict anything about i've been asking, i've been asking, i've been asking for this data that would get me out of this circle. and now we know why it took so long to get the stuff from this car, it's because the fbi wouldn't go to general motors on this event data. they were -- the fbi bought a suburban, riding around and reverse engineering all these systems to try to come up with reports, and then they come in here and tell you some of it's inaccurate, but this is what we've got. during the middle of that, get onstar. thankfully we did. thankfully we did. so then we roll in to labor day weekend of 2021 where alex, long-time drug problem, his financial issues, misconduct were exposed. and that made him an easy, easy, easy target for s.l.e.d. and i hate to say this, but the evidence is crystal clear from that moment they started fabricating evidence against alec. mr. griffin, that's an awful, awful charge, don't all lawyers accuse law enforcement of fabricating evidence. i can tell you this guy right here, was a federal prosecutor, was a state prosecutor, and some of my best friends are law enforcement, and i don't make that claim lightly. here what you have heard is they came up with a report that says alex had high velocity blood spatter on him. what's that? that means you're within feet of a shooting. they didn't just say any shooting. in their report it says as a result of paul's murder. high velocity blood spatter on his shirt as a result of paul's murder. that was number one. that's statement number one. why not say that it's fabricated, well, you heard agent zapata said we did hema trace confirmory test on that shirt. there's a presumptive test, it turns purple on other agents as well, including bleach. you also heard that the shirt came out of the bag wet and smelled like detergent. they supply it, it turns purple in places, so they think, well, that must be blood. next thing they do at the s.l.e.d. lab is they do a confirmatory test to see is it blood, 0 for 74, not blood, not blood. that didn't stop s.l.e.d. from going out and pursuing with a vengeance this report. they didn't give the no blood test result to the guy in oklahoma and when it surfaced, when it surfaced, they had a problem on their hands, and they were pushing it. you heard the testimony from the stand, they went from mr. bloody shirt leading up to this trial to mr. clean during this trial, and they asked him and they raised issues during the trial, where's clothes, no one's