Convicted murderer and fraudster Alex Murdaugh is challenging the 40-year sentence for financial fraud that he received in April from a federal judge, calling it “cruel and unusual punishment.”
In a brief filed Thursday with the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote that the 40-year financial fraud sentence handed down by U.S. Judge Richard Gergel in April is grossly disproportionate compared to other similar financial crime sentences.
“The District Court effectively sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Murdaugh’s brief said.
The U.S. Attorney’s office could not be reached for comment.
Murdaugh is seeking to vacate Gergel’s 40-year sentence and wants a new sentencing hearing presided over by a new judge, preferably one from outside South Carolina, the brief said.
Moreover, because Murdaugh was 55 when Gergel sentenced him, a 40-year sentence is effectively a death sentence, Murdaugh’s lawyers argued.
“With good time credit, he will be eligible for release after serving 85 percent of his sentence, or 34 years,” the brief said. “However, his life expectancy is only 24.14 years, according to the Social Security Life Expectancy Table. As the government acknowledged at the sentencing hearing, even a sentence of 30 years is a death sentence.”
Murdaugh, who turned 56 in May, was also sentenced in state court last November to 27 years in state prison for roughly the same criminal conduct for which he was sentenced to 40 years in federal court. With good time, he could be released in 23 years.
“Murdaugh’s (federal) sentence is harsher than any other handed down in South Carolina state or federal court,” the brief said. “Murdaugh’s sentence is twice as harsh as sentences imposed in federal courts in the United States since 2018… Murdaugh was not convicted of murder in federal court. Yet, he received a sentence which is more appropriate for a murder conviction.”
Murdaugh’s thefts consisted mostly of schemes to embezzle more than $8 million from settlements in personal injury and wrongful death claims. A lawyer, he stole over some 15 years from his fellow lawyers, clients and even his own brother, Randy Murdaugh.
At the April hearing, Gergel at times seemed to take almost personal offense at the betrayals committed by Murdaugh to the state’s legal profession, a class of lawyers that prides itself on honor and trust.
“The defendant’s conduct has brought disgrace and disrepute to himself, his law firm, the Hampton County bar, the South Carolina bar, if not the entire court system,” Gergel said, underscoring the fact that while disgrace is not a crime, it was to Gergel one of Murdaugh’s greatest offenses.
“All the client victims received a portion of their settlement proceeds and were unaware that Murdaugh was skimming off the top,” the brief said. “Murdaugh used these stolen funds to support a severe opioid addiction. When he was confronted about missing fees by his law firm, Murdaugh readily confessed to his misdeeds.”
Murdaugh is also serving two consecutive life sentences in state prison for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul in June 2021. After a six-week trial in early 2023, a Colleton County jury found Murdaugh guilty of the two killings. Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Murdaugh to the life sentences.
At the April federal financial crimes hearing, federal prosecutor Emily Limehouse said the federal charges were brought in part to provide a backstop to the state murder convictions in case they are overturned on appeal, Murdaugh’s brief said.
“We always intended to charge him for the federal financial crimes and hold him fully accountable, but really with the goal of providing a backstop, that, should anything fall through with those murder convictions, we would have charged him and held him accountable,” Murdaugh’s brief quoted Limehouse as saying.
Limehouse also said at the hearing that federal prosecutors believe Murdaugh may have stolen as much as $6 million more than the nearly $9 million in stolen funds he pled guilty to.
The 40-year sentence handed down by Gergel was 10 more years than the 30-year sentence federal prosecutors were requesting for Murdaugh’s financial crimes.
Although Murdaugh had a federal sentencing guideline range of up to about 22 years when compared to similar defendants, Gergel went out of his way to compare Murdaugh with one of the nation’s worst embezzlers, Bernie Madoff, who for years operated a pyramid con scheme in New York that sucked in billions from gullible people, the brief said.
In 2009, Madoff received 150 years in prison and died in 2021 at a federal prison in North Carolina.
Madoff had stolen $13.6 billion, Murdaugh’s lawyers wrote, while Murdaugh had stolen less than $10 million.
“Sentences which are grossly disproportionate to the crimes committed are unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment,” Murdaugh’s brief said.
Gergel should have conducted a proportionality review but failed to do so, Murdaugh’s brief argued.
Murdaugh’s lawyers who filed the brief are Jim Griffin and Margaret Fox.
Murdaugh’s federal crimes included money laundering, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and wire fraud affecting a financial institution.
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