CNN

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — The South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions Wednesday primarily focused on how a county clerk’s improper comments to the jury violated his right to a fair trial.

But the court’s 29-page ruling also offered “guidance” for prosecutors, advising them to reel in their use of Murdaugh’s financial crimes in a murder retrial.

That’s just one way a second trial could be different than the now-vacated 2023 trial. The retrial is likely to have less focus on financial evidence, a lack of surprise evidence or testimony, and may prove a challenge in finding impartial jurors, legal experts told CNN.

“If there’s a retrial, the whole case has to start again,” said Jessica Roth, a former prosecutor and professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York. “It’s a new trial from start to finish.”

Murdaugh’s attorneys said on NBC’s “Today” the defense has the advantage in a retrial.

“In a retrial, the statistics are in favor of the defendant because you have a lot more recorded testimony of witnesses,” attorney Jim Griffin said Thursday. “You get to impeach them with inconsistencies. It will be a totally different trial, I promise you.”

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office plans to retry Murdaugh on the murder charges “as soon as possible.” Prosecutors still have a window to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or to appeal to the US Supreme Court, but lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said he expected a retrial ahead.

“I’m thinking right now what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna tee this thing up and do it again,” Waters told CNN’s Laura Coates.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling was the latest twist in the sprawling Murdaugh saga that has riveted the public and spawned true crime documentaries, podcasts and best-selling books.

Murdaugh, a prominent attorney from a South Carolina Lowcountry legal dynasty, was convicted by a jury of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, in March 2023. Those convictions are no longer.

He remains in prison on dozens of financial crimes, serving concurrent state and federal sentences of 27 and 40 years.

The murder trial was the capstone to a remarkable fall from grace for the personal injury lawyer, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather served as the local prosecutor consecutively from 1920 to 2006.

Murdaugh was a partner at a powerful law firm with his name on it. But that prominence belied underlying issues, and the killings of his wife and son were followed by accusa

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — The South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions Wednesday primarily focused on how a county clerk’s improper comments to the jury violated his right to a fair trial.

But the court’s 29-page ruling also offered “guidance” for prosecutors, advising them to reel in their use of Murdaugh’s financial crimes in a murder retrial.

That’s just one way a second trial could be different than the now-vacated 2023 trial. The retrial is likely to have less focus on financial evidence, a lack of surprise evidence or testimony, and may prove a challenge in finding impartial jurors, legal experts told CNN.

“If there’s a retrial, the whole case has to start again,” said Jessica Roth, a former prosecutor and professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York. “It’s a new trial from start to finish.”

Murdaugh’s attorneys said on NBC’s “Today” the defense has the advantage in a retrial.

“In a retrial, the statistics are in favor of the defendant because you have a lot more recorded testimony of witnesses,” attorney Jim Griffin said Thursday. “You get to impeach them with inconsistencies. It will be a totally different trial, I promise you.”

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office plans to retry Murdaugh on the murder charges “as soon as possible.” Prosecutors still have a window to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or to appeal to the US Supreme Court, but lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said he expected a retrial ahead.

“I’m thinking right now what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna tee this thing up and do it again,” Waters told CNN’s Laura Coates.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling was the latest twist in the sprawling Murdaugh saga that has riveted the public and spawned true crime documentaries, podcasts and best-selling books.

Murdaugh, a prominent attorney from a South Carolina Lowcountry legal dynasty, was convicted by a jury of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son, Paul, in March 2023. Those convictions are no longer.

He remains in prison on dozens of financial crimes, serving concurrent state and federal sentences of 27 and 40 years.

The murder trial was the capstone to a remarkable fall from grace for the personal injury lawyer, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather served as the local prosecutor consecutively from 1920 to 2006.

Murdaugh was a partner at a powerful law firm with his name on it. But that prominence belied underlying issues, and the killings of his wife and son were followed by accusations of misappropriated funds, his resignation, a bizarre alleged suicide-for-hire and insurance scam plot, a stint in rehab for drug addiction, dozens of financial crimes, his disbarment and, ultimately, the murder charges.

Here’s a look at some of the key factors that may be different in a seco

EASTERN PACIFIC REGION, Calif. (KEYT) – A research team of Cal Poly statisticians and marine biologists from UC San Diego have developed a new way to monitor local whale populations by measuring the abundance of the microorganisms they eat.

Traditionally, the presence of whales has been studied through visual confirmations, photo identification, satellite imagery, genomic matching, and acoustic monitoring.

But watching and listening for whales can only get you so much information for these marine mammals that travel vast distances in the open ocean.

Instead of that direct method of observation, a joint research team of marine biologists with UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and statisticians from Cal Poly decided to study the very small lifeforms that the largest animals on our planet eat.

"The concept of this project was to try and find an indirect signal that's based on ecological relationships in the microbial communities that are in the water and how they respond to macro-organisms, such as whales," explained Cal Poly assistant professor of statistics and a lead author of the study, Trevor Ruiz "We developed a tailored approach, and while our methods are not off the shelf, they remain transferrable to prediction from microbial data more broadly, and along with our scientific findings we have provided a portable software implementation of the methods to lower barriers to adoption for other researchers who might be interested in applying our approach to other problems."

Researchers analyzed the presence of microbial life that filter-feeding whales, also known as baleen whales, consumed between 2014 and 2020 from San Diego to Morro Bay and their findings were published earlier this month in the science journal PLOS One.

"Large baleen whales play a vital role in marine ecosystems by helping to regulate ecosystem processes. They are of conservation and management relevance as many populations are listed as threatened (Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species," opened Microbial and small zooplankton communities predict density of baleen whales in the southern California Current Ecosystem published on May 6, 2026 in PLOS One. "Each year, blue, fin, and humpback whales migrate to the productive waters of the California Current to feed on dense aggregations of krill and schooling fishes. Their foraging grounds and migratory corridors overlap with commercial shipping routes and areas of military activity, particularly in Southern California, making the ability to predict baleen whale distribution an important management directive in the region."

The overlap of migrating whales and shipping lanes led to the development of a decade-old vessel speed reduction partnership that aims to reduce emissions in the Santa Barbara Channel and mitigate whale strikes.

The Santa Barbara Channel's unique geography draws whales to the area as shown in t

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