Mike Sutton

Mike Sutton testified for the defense as an engineering expert, presenting analyses of shooting trajectories, acoustics, vehicle movement, possible phone motion, and headlight illumination. His work drew on SLED measurements and photographs, a later scene scan, and cartridge-case locations.

Sutton placed the intersection of rifle paths near the quail pen and dog house within a small area. He said a person about 5-foot-2 to 5-foot-4 firing from a low, hip-level position best fit his analysis and considered it very unlikely that Alex Murdaugh fired the quail-pen shot under the posture assumptions he used. He nevertheless acknowledged that a taller person could fit the trajectory by crouching, kneeling, bending, or adopting another altered posture.

The prosecution challenged Sutton's specialized credentials and the assumptions underlying his opinions. Sutton acknowledged that he lacked formal firearms, pathology, gunshot-wound, and shooting-reconstruction credentials, and that his analysis did not model projectile deflection, victim orientation, casing movement, or every possible firing position. He maintained that trajectory, acoustic, and vehicle-motion analysis fell within mechanical engineering and that the variables raised on cross-examination would not materially change his conclusion that an unprepared listener inside the house would not hear the shots.

On redirect, Sutton distinguished measured projectile physics from assumptions about weapon handling and reaffirmed his height opinion when limited to hip or shoulder operation. On recross, he agreed that different-sized people could fit the trajectories through different firing positions and that someone at the kennels would have heard the gunfire. A State rebuttal expert later accepted the general direction of the quail-pen path but disputed whether the available defects, weapon position, and cartridge evidence could reliably establish shooter height or exclude a taller shooter.