It has been quite an emotional day.
In his testimony
a bit earlier, Murdoch adamant
he did not shoot his wife or his son
Mr. Murdoch,
did you take this gun or any gun like it
and blow your son's brains out
on June 7th or any day or any time?
No, I did not.
Did you shoot a 300 blackout
into her head, causing her death
Mr. Griffin, I didn't
shoot my wife or my son any time
ever
Elliott Williams, Diane
Gallagher is still with us, CNN's
Jean Casarez.
Also joining us, our coverage.
And Jean, you've covered a lot of trials.
And when you put a defendant
on the stand, you're taking a risk.
Sometimes you build up a timeline
and then you ask the question,
did you do it right out of the box?
The defense attorneys asked
Alec Murdoch, what did you make of that?
Well,
they got right to the heart of it,
and they also got
to the heart of all the lies,
because there have been a lot of lies
that the prosecution has brought out.
In this case,
the most important lie of
all is the one that he said
he was
never down at the kennels close in time
to when the murders happened.
And he now admitted it
and he admitted it, saying I was on drugs
and we know he had an addiction.
We've heard about that
through the majority of this trial.
And he said I would develop a paranoia.
And at that moment,
there was a paranoia
and I did not tell the truth
that I had been down there.
What's interesting about that
is that, remember,
he is talking to a jury
and that jury, they have friends.
They have relatives, they have lives.
How many of them have been touched
by someone that had an addiction?
And if so, did
that addiction produce lies
from those friends or family members?
So some jurors may understand
what he's saying.
Others may not take it as fact
and think that's just an excuse.
But I think it's an important point.
But it's his credibility
that is on the line right now
because the jury can't take notes.
They can just watch and listen.
And now they're looking at him
very close.
I don't think they're
too far away from him
and really judging everything
he says with a credibility factor.
Number one, it's a gamble
to put a defendant
on the stand testifying
in his own defense.
In this case,
given the way Diane described in the way
we heard the prosecution
lay out,
he repeatedly said
he was not at the kennels
and they had the video on his son's
phone proving
he was indeed at the kennels.
A, did they have a choice?
And what did you make of the idea?
I lied because I was paranoid
because of a drug addiction.
Well, so let's talk about why
you don't put a defendant on the stand.
You're putting somebody on who
no one can't control the story.
They're going to have a prosecutor,
you know, in an hour
whenever the prosecution comes,
that will pick apart
every moment of his testimony.
Now, what's a little bit
different in this case
is that you have a murder where no one,
you don't have a murder weapon.
You don't have fingerprints,
you don't have DNA,
you don't have eyewitnesses,
So the prosecution actually
doesn't have a particularly strong case
at the moment.
Maybe there's an argument to be made
for putting the defendant on the stand.
Now, you got a problem
because he lied to the cops.
This is South Carolina and a defendant
who has admitted
that he lied to the police.
And I think this
that's a point
that jurors likely
are not to take very kindly to.
And again,
we're seeing his side of the story here.
There's going to come a moment
when that prosecutor
is going to put him on the stand
and walk him through
every one of his statements.
And it's not going to be good for him.
And, Diane,
to that point,
again, the trial plays out
and we learned late yesterday
and then this morning
confirmed that Alec Murdoch,
yes, indeed, would take the
stand in his own defense,
has his legal team explained
to you, to reporters
why they made that calculation?
Was it the plan from day one or was it
because of the way the trial played out
up to this point?
So, John, I can tell you
that sources
close to the legal the defense's
legal strategy
have been telling me since day
one that it was an option
that Alec Murdoch
wanted to take the stand
in his own defense.
And look, it's sort of gone
back and forth from he's
not going to testify.
He'll only testify if he needs to.
But they've never changed in
saying that he wanted to testify.
Yesterday, my colleague Randi Kaye
and I going back and forth,
our sources,
we're being told
essentially, yeah,
we think it's going to happen
and then, no, hold off.
We're still trying to make this decision
that Alec Murdoch
only himself can make,
that he was still thinking it
over in the jail cell.
I was told this morning around 6:00
that it was more likely than not that
he would, in fact, take the stand.
There was a moment
before the jury came in
when his attorney, Dick
Harpootlian, was speaking with the judge
and well,
he seemed to be hinting at the fact
that because the prosecution
can bring in questions
about all of these other charges,
remember, Alec Murdoch is facing 99 other charges
in addition to these murder charges,
most of them
dealing with theft
and fraud and financial misdeeds.
They're going to be able
to ask him about that.
And he's not been convicted
of any of those yet.
And they seem to say, look,
we don't want him to get into this.
The judge said, look,
they can ask those questions.
We'll deal with it
as they come question by question.
But his attorneys seem worried
he could incriminate himself
in other crimes
as he was trying to defend himself
from this one.
One last thing to remember, John.
Look, he's a disbarred attorney,
but he is an attorney.
He's been taking diligent notes
throughout this.
They think that Alec Murdoch is
we've heard people say charming,
good with people.
Alec Murdoch
obviously thinks that
this is his only option here
to try and convince the jury
he did not kill his wife and his son.
Excellent point.
From Diane
Gallagher back in the room
with Eliot Williams.
To that point,
the prosecution is trying to say
this was calculated,
cold blooded, deliberate
and that this man is off the path of what
normal human behavior
that he was opening text messages
that he Google the restaurant
after he sees
the lifeless bodies of his wife
and one of his sons.
He was trying to make the point
in his testimony
that he was trying to call friends
and that was inadvertent.
But again, they have to use his testimony
to rebut some of the powerful
both the specifics, the timeline
and that sort of character question.
And you're hearing something.
There's a term for this.
It's called fronting.
You're like sort of the dirt
in your story.
These are all facts
that are quite bad for him.
The defense has to be
the one to put them on the record,
because if you give that
to the prosecution and have,
like I said earlier,
the prosecution controlling the narrative
about calling the pizza place or wherever
it was or Googling things,
it looks far worse to the jury.
So that's why
they're trying to get it out there.
But again,
look, the prosecution,
what they've got right here is a motive.
In light of all those other crimes
that they're accusing him of having done.
There's a motive there.
The problems that they just don't
seem to have a way to link him
to the actual murders.
And that's the biggest defect
in the prosecution's case thus far.