tablet-less
Already serving life behind bars for killing wife and son, disgraced lawyer now also has cellphone and tablet usage suspended
Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced scion of a South Carolina legal dynasty currently serving life behind bars for the murders of his wife and son, had some of his prison privileges revoked after using his cellphone to take part in a documentary about himself.
South Carolina’s Department of Corrections (SCDC) has rules preventing inmates from conducting interviews. However, Murdaugh sidestepped those mandates by reading passages from a journal he kept during his murder trial over a phone call with his lawyer Jim Griffin, who in turn provided those recordings to Fox Nation for their upcoming documentary The Fall of the House of Murdaugh, the State reports.
While the Murdaugh recording was made in June, due to attorney-client privilege that prevented the SCDC from hearing the contents of the phone call, the quasi-interview wasn’t discovered until August 8th, at which point the SCDC suspended access to Murdaugh’s cellphone and tablet.
Murdaugh, perhaps unclear why his cellphone was suspended, then procured a prison-monitored cellphone from a fellow inmate to make phone calls to the outside world, another violation of SCDC policy; in one call, revealed by the incident report, Murdaugh complained that his own cellphone wasn’t working and that he was using another inmate’s phone, which is as smoking gun as it gets.
In addition to his life sentence — as well as all his other legal trouble — the “family annihilator” now faces 30 days of no canteen privileges plus the continued suspension of his cellphone and tablet, a punishment handed out to both misbehaving children and convicted killers.
“Tablets are designed and secured for correctional use,” the SCDC said in a statement. “They are considered a privilege. The department will determine when and if inmate Murdaugh will earn the opportunity to be issued a tablet again.”