Day 19 - February 21, 2023

Juror 441 reported feeling unwell and, with both sides' agreement, was replaced on the regular panel by randomly selected Juror 530. The court also advised Jim Griffin against posting or reposting trial-related material; Griffin agreed not to tweet or repost until the trial ended. Buster Murdaugh described the family's firearms and testified that guns were sometimes left in vehicles, on golf carts, or around Moselle. He characterized the family's June 7 calls as normal, recounted learning that Maggie and Paul had been shot, and described his father as crying and broken down afterward. On cross-examination, Buster said he had not known about his father's financial difficulties, described the boat-crash litigation as unsettling, and testified that he never again slept at Moselle. After being qualified as an engineering expert, Mike Sutton presented trajectory and acoustical reconstructions. He concluded that the measured .300 Blackout paths most likely reflected a short shooter or an unusually low firing posture and opined that it was very unlikely Alex Murdaugh fired the quail-pen shot. Sutton also testified that a person inside the quiet main house who was not listening for gunfire would not hear the tested rifle shots, while agreeing that someone at the kennels would hear the gunfire. On cross-examination, Sutton acknowledged that he lacked formal firearms, pathology, gunshot-wound, and shooting-reconstruction training or certification. He also acknowledged limitations involving an unlabeled vehicle-speed graph, representative ammunition and testing conditions, the untested feed-room pellet, and trajectory calculations that did not account for possible impacts or deflection through bodies, wood, or other objects. He maintained his principal opinions but clarified that the trajectory lines fixed the weapon's path, not the shooter's identity, and that people of different sizes could place a weapon on those lines by assuming different postures.