# Murdaugh's Lawyer Has History With The Judge Deciding His Fate

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948/murdaugh-s-lawyer-has-history-with-the-judge-deciding-his-fate
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948/murdaugh-s-lawyer-has-history-with-the-judge-deciding-his-fate.md
Podcast: [True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews](https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948)
Published: 2026-06-12T19:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://audioboom.com/posts/8915611
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/audioboom.com/posts/8915611.mp3?modified=1781205409&sid=5001260&source=rss
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Duration seconds: 879

## Resource

The latest Alex Murdaugh case update concerns the bench, not the defendant. The South Carolina Supreme Court has vested Judge Debra McCaslin with exclusive jurisdiction over all proceedings in the Murdaugh matter — including any retrial on charges that he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul — and her professional history with lead defense counsel Dick Harpootlian is now a matter of public scrutiny. The record, as reported: early in her career, McCaslin rented office space from Harpootlian, and during her judicial screening she identified him among the attorneys who shaped her legal career, reportedly stating he made an impression on her life. In this episode, defense attorney and former felony prosecutor Eric Faddis applies the actual legal standards to those facts — what judicial disqualification requires, how appearance-of-impropriety analysis works, who can raise the issue, and why prior professional association between bench and bar is far more common, and far less determinative, than headlines suggest. Faddis then turns to the substantive authority McCaslin now holds. The Supreme Court's reversal — rooted in former clerk of court Becky Hill's misconduct, to which she pleaded guilty — came with a directive that any retrial sharply limit the financial-crimes testimony that consumed hours of the first trial. McCaslin will define that boundary. Faddis assesses what the State's case looks like at each possible line, which evidentiary disputes from the first trial remain unresolved, and what her reportedly stringent sentencing record signals about how she may run this courtroom. His closing analysis addresses the only question that ultimately matters: what has to go right for the State this time — and does this judge make that more or less likely? Join Our SubStack…

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## Transcript

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