Murdaugh Murder Trial: Closing statement from the prosecution (part one)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: It's been a long trial, hasn't it? On June 7th, 2021, at the Moselle property in Colleton County, Maggie Murdoch and Paul Murdoch were brutally and maliciously murdered at the kennels by Alec Murdoch. Paul, as you know, suffered two shotgun blasts. Maggie suffered five blackout rifle wounds. And after an exhaustive investigation, there is only one person who had the motive, who had the means, who had the opportunity to commit these crimes, and also whose guilty conduct after these crimes betrays him. The defendant was the one person who was living a lie. The defendant is the person on which a storm was descending. And the defendant is a person where his own storm would actually mean consequences for Maggie and Paul and consequences for those who trusted him. And that person is the defendant, Richard Alexander Murdoch. I know this has been a long trial because it's a complicated case. And I'm not going to talk forever. I promise. But I am going to try to distill this down for you. And the first thing I want to do is set the stage. And to set the stage, we have to understand a little bit about Alec Murdoch and who he was and who he is. He was a person of singular prominence and respect in this community. But he's also a person who's been able to avoid accountability for all of his life. While he was outwardly giving the illusion of wealth and a very lucrative law practice, some bad land deals and that sort of thing, exacerbated by the economic recession, led to some financial problems. And then he had some big cases in the early 2000, 2011, 2012. And all his partners, and you've heard testimony to this, thought that that had taken care of things. You've heard cases like the Thomas case and the Pinckney case and the Plowler case and the Badger case. But the evidence that you've heard shows that the defendant became so addicted and so dependent on a velocity of money that the millions of dollars in legal fees that he was receiving was not enough. And so he started to steal. And how did he steal? He stole by billing personal expenses to the firm. He stole by stealing from his own family. You heard the testimony about the check he stole from his brother Randy. But then the main ways were two schemes that he developed. And the first one was to get checks made out from the client trust account to Palmetto State Bank to fast talk the staff and fast talk the clients with those disbursements and then take it to Palmetto State Bank, where his buddy Russell Lafitte would convert those and use those to pay personal expenses. And each time, until the end, it worked because the client was also getting a big check. And they were walking out of there thinking that everything had been fine when it was not. But then in 2015, he opened up the fake Forge account. And then all he had to do was get disbursements made out to the Forge account. And once he did that, he would convert those to his personal use. And to do that, though, he also had to fast talk staff and fast talk clients. And that scheme continued up until everything fell apart in the end. The other thing you have to understand is during this time when he's earning millions of dollars and stealing millions of dollars, he's also borrowing millions of dollars from wherever he can. The bank, his law partners, his father. And it still wasn't enough. And this slow burn was continuing and continuing until the boat crash happened in February of 2019. And that changed everything. That set in motion things that were going to happen because of the criminal charges related to that case as well as the civil charges related to that case. And in the aftermath of the boat case, things changed. The pace of his stealing increased. In fact, that's when he stole the money from Tony Satterfield that you heard from. Ultimately stole about $4.5 million between the Satterfields and others. And unlike other cases, Tony Satterfield, who was the son of his longtime housekeeper, he took all the money. Took every bit of it. And that was coming to a head as we move into the spring of 2021 because there had been some publicity. And you heard from Tony Satterfield that he was, the defendant reached out in the spring of 2021 because there had been publicity and saying, hey, I'm still working on the case. Everything's fine. I'm still working on the case. It's good. But the reality is the defendant didn't have that money to pay it back. And he had one saving grace because, as you've heard, they don't get paid until the end of the year. And his saving grace was the Ferris case, which they tried in December. They get the verdict and get paid in March. And that's when he convinces Chris Wilson to send those $792,000 of fees to him. But the problem is that only lasted for about two months. $792,000 only lasted for about two months. And then he's running out of money again. Meanwhile, you've heard in the Boat case that Mark Tinsley was seeking to get a large personal recovery from Alec Murdoch of $10 million because he thought, as many people did, that he was wealthy and had a lot of money. And when they said he didn't, he filed a motion to compel. And you've heard testimony about whether or not that had been granted, but it doesn't change the fact that that's what Mark Tinsley was seeking to do. And that Boat case hearing had been scheduled for June 10th. In May of 2021, as we move into June, that's when Alec's own paralegal got the expense check for the Ferris case, but not the fee check, and tried to raise that to Alec and couldn't get a straight answer, tried to raise it to Chris Wilson and couldn't get a straight answer to his office. And so he goes to Jeannie Seconder, and Jeannie Seconder goes to the partners, and they can't get an answer about that either, and they want an answer to that because they're worried, because Alec has been talking about structuring fees, and they're worried he may be trying to hide assets because of the Boat case, and they don't want to be a part of that. All of these things are coming to a head, and his finances are falling apart. And you heard from the banker there. You heard where his finances were at on June 7th, 2021. And you saw what happened in the wake of that. Within a short period of time, he was negative $347,000. On June 7th, 2021, he was in the office. He was working on the Boat case, working on those financial disclosures. When Jeannie Seconder came in and confronted him about those fees that he no longer had and couldn't pay back. And on June 7th, 2021, and he tells this to Jeannie Seconder, his father, Randolph, is having a very difficult time. And while they might have said it was some positive news, the reality is that he was very, very sick, and he had always been someone that the defender could go to, that he could borrow money from. And so that pressure is happening as well. And on June 7th, 2021, as all these pressures were mounting, the defendant killed Maggie and Paul. And how do we know that? We're going to talk in detail about that. But the timeline puts him there. The forensic timeline puts him there. And the use of his family weapons corroborates that. And his lies and guilty actions afterwards confirms it. And we'll go over each of those in great detail. Before we get to that, though, I want to finish out. Because in the wake of this, everything changes. All those things that were coming to a head immediately go away. It's a different world now. They're not asking about the Ferris fees anymore. And you heard testimony to that. Mark Tinsley doesn't believe the case is going to have the same value anymore because the sympathies of the case have changed after this tragedy. And you heard that. And who would better understand that than Alec Murdoch, who does the same work? The vote case hearing goes away. And everyone immediately rallies around Alec Murdoch. And it worked. Because it allowed him to borrow $250,000 from Johnny Parker, his law partner, who, of course, wouldn't have loaned him that money if he knew what Alec was up to, and allowed him to go to Palmetto State Bank and get $350,000 and then off the books loan that hadn't even been applied for, and to send that money to Chris Wilson and convince Chris Wilson to pay another $192,000 of his own money and to send an email to the firm that everything was okay. And that made it another month or so until Annette Griswold found that Ferris check in his office and Jeannie Seconder looked up the forge accounts. What happened in the wake of that? What was the reaction of Alec Murdoch? Within a day of September 3rd of him being forced to resign, his buddy Chris Wilson is trying to see him, comes and sees him on September 4th and confronts him about what he's been doing. And then within two hours, the side of the road happens. And Alec is a victim again. When accountability was at his door, he was a victim again. And he told an extremely detailed lie and went so far as to draw a composite sketch with the police of this assailant. And the accountability that had arrived at his doorstep again, he tried again, tried to get it to go away, and it worked for a little while. People thought, oh my gosh, what's happened here? So we'd be suspicious of Alec anymore, but this time it fell apart a little quicker because his own brother figured out that he was trying to buy drugs. And the case fell apart very quickly. This is the setup for what we look at and what's going on. And it seems like a story that's far removed from most people's experience because it is. It is a different story like has never been seen before. But the reason is, is that he is a different man than the kind of stories that we've seen before. This is a different set of circumstances than we've seen before. And it's certainly easy to understand when you have a middle-aged man who's outwardly successful, who has a strong family legacy, who has a prominence in the community and a reputation, but is living a lie. And that leads to, and can lead to, those pressures being overwhelming in actions like this happening. Husbands have been killing wives, unfortunately, for years, and husbands killing sons goes back as far as King Herod, probably further. When those pressures mount and someone becomes a family annihilation. Now the computer input, please. All right. We've got to do a little law school. I'm certainly not a professor, but we need to go through a few of the concepts here. And one of the most important concepts is the fundamental role, one of the fundamental roles while y'all are here. As the judge has told you, he's the judge of the law, but y'all are the judge of the facts. And what does judge of the facts mean? Well, a big part of that is that you determine credibility. You determine believability. You determine which witnesses you want to rely on or not rely on. You can rely on a part of a witness's testimony, all the witness's testimony, one against many, many against one. It's up to each one of you individually to make that determinations and decisions, and then to collectively discuss those into a group decision. But credibility is important. Is it believable? Is what somebody's telling you believable? And there's many things you can consider in credibility. But a few of those are the demeanor of the witness on the witness stand, whether the witness has a reason to be biased, whether the testimony of the witness was contradicted on one hand or supported or corroborated on another, whether the witness has been dishonest in the past. And again, you can believe witnesses all against one, one against others, and you can believe portions of a witness's testimony as you see fit. Same thing goes for experts. Expert is a legal determination that allows them to give an opinion. Just because someone's qualified as an expert doesn't mean that you have to accept their opinion. And you can judge that based on your assessment of the credibility and the relevance and the believability of that testimony. There's nothing different about that when someone's an expert. Beyond a reasonable doubt. I talked about this at the beginning of the case. And it's our burden. It's a burden we welcome. It's how this system works, that we have to prove the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And what is a reasonable doubt? A reasonable doubt is a doubt that makes a reasonable, honest, sincere juror hesitate to act. It's proof that a reasonable person would not hesitate to rely on in their affairs. But a reasonable doubt is not and leaves you firmly convinced of the guilt of the defendant. But it doesn't have to overcome every possible doubt. It doesn't have to overcome every possible doubt. I used to try a case against a defense attorney, and he would pull up a picture of something. Right here I have the Mona Lisa. And he would tear off a piece like that and say, Ladies and gentlemen, that's reasonable doubt. And my response to that is, you still know what this is, right? You still know what it is. And that's reasonable doubt, okay? If you still know what it is, and you're firmly convinced, then it's your duty under the oath that you've taken, as the judge will give you the law, to convict and defend. Direct and circumstantial. Direct, directly proves the existence of the fact, and circumstantial evidence is proof of a chain of facts and circumstances indicating the existence of that fact. And we talked a little bit about that at the beginning. Sometimes people in common discussions will say, Oh, the case is just circumstantial. But the law says that it doesn't matter. The circumstantial evidence can be just as good as direct evidence. It is just as good. It makes no distinction between that, and the judge will charge you on that. There's no greater degree of certainty required with circumstantial evidence than of direct evidence. The circumstances must be consistent with each other, and when taken together, point conclusively to the guilt of the defendant. And I gave you all an illustration at the beginning. I'm not going to redo the whole thing, but about being inside. And you go outside, and it starts raining, and then you know it's raining, okay? Because you've got direct evidence. You're getting wet. But if you go inside, and you're in a closed room, and all of a sudden it gets dark, and you hear thunder, and you hear the wind rustling, and you hear the rain coming down on top of the roof, and then after an hour or so, you go outside, and the sun's shining, but there's limbs all down in the yard, and it's wet as far as the eye can see, and there are puddles in the yard and puddles in the driveway. Is there any reasonable doubt what happened? That it rained? Now, again, I'll say it again. Supposedly, I guess somebody could have sprayed the whole neighborhood with a hose and blown a fan to blow the wind down, or blow the limbs down, simulate wind, but that's not a reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen. Circumstantial evidence can be just as strong as direct evidence. It is just as strong. The law makes no distinction just because of its circumstantial. All right, let's talk about murder. Murder is the willful killing of someone with malice aforethought. It's the unlawful and willful killing of any person by one with malice aforethought. The crime of murder is really, as far as the elements go, fairly simple. The operative terms here, the most important terms are malice, which is the mental state that the person must have, and a forethought. But let's talk about those. What exactly do they mean? Malice, and it could be any of these. It can be the hatred, ill will, or hostility towards another, but it also can be the intentional doing of a wrongful act with an intent to afflict an injury under the circumstances that the law would infer an evil intent. It could be a general malignant recklessness of the lives and safety of others. It could be a wicked or a depraved spirit and intent on doing wrong. It could be using firearms, shotgun, and a blackout to blow somebody away. That can be malice, ladies and gentlemen, if that's what you decide. A forethought sounds like it has to be planned, and certainly planning would account for a forethought, but it may be conceived at the very moment, a split second or in conjunction with the act. So a forethought doesn't require planning for that malice to occur. All it has to do is exist in the moment, just a split second or in the moment, that the act occurs. So when that trigger's pulled, as long as there's that intentional doing of a wrongful act, intent to inflict an injury, there would be an evil intent, a malignant recklessness, which you can infer from the circumstances of the case, then that's all you need. And how do you do that? I said infer. Because people don't always yell out what their intentions are. You have to infer it from the circumstances of the case itself. Look at the crime scene, look at what happened, look at the backstory, look at all the circumstances that come together, and you can infer malice from those. Last little bit of law school. Malice and drugs. Voluntary intoxication does not impair a person's ability to act with malice aforethought. That's a legal principle. If you voluntarily get intoxicated, it is not a defense to a crime, and it does not negate the malicious nature of that crime. If one voluntarily intoxicates themselves, they are just as responsible for their actions as when they are not intoxicated. And the judge, again, take what the law comes from the judge, but this is a legal principle that you will hear. Voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime. And why does the law say that? Well, you can't take whatever it is and deny responsibility for what you've done under the law. I'm going to move through this quickly because we've already talked about it. And just for scheduling, I'm going to have to stop my argument so that we can all eat. But I'll give you all a chance to get away from this for a little bit. But I'm going to go ahead and go through some of this that we just talked about, but very quickly. Gathering storm in Alex's life. We talked about the family legacy. You heard how important that was to him and how important that was to this family and how it was in danger because of the boat case. The criminal charges as well as the civil charges. That legacy was in danger. And it was threatening also to expose him for who he really was, which would totally destroy his part of that legacy. Lose his career. Lose his bar license. Face consequences like he's never seen. He's also a successful lawyer and a part-time prosecutor. And as we go through and talk about the circumstances of this case and talk about the crime scene and the timeline and all the rest of it, think of it with that in mind. That this is an individual who is trained to understand how to put together cases, complex cases. He's been a prosecutor. He's done complex car wrecks. He understands the law. He's given closing arguments to juries before. So when you have a defendant like that, be thinking about whether or not this individual is constructing defenses and constructing alibis. Talked about his law practice. You've heard how lucrative it is. I had to struggle with him to get him to admit that he was wealthy, making more than a million dollars a year. I'll let you all decide whether or not that's wealthy, but he admitted ultimately that that was not uncommon for him to make that much money on top of stealing and borrowing on top of that. The important thing, though, to remember again, and I want to highlight this, is that they get, under the way that firm worked, they get their money at the end of the year. And then it's up to them to make it last. And that's the big problem that he had. That's why he had to get the Pharisees. He can't, if he's out of money in May, he's not going to, unless he can borrow it or steal it, he's out of luck. And the hounds were at the gate. All right. We talked about this. He's got, you heard, I think, Jeannie described him as having intentional chaos. We had the land deals. He's servicing this huge debt load. He constantly needs new money coming in. And this has been going on for more than a decade, a constant hamster wheel. The stress and the pressure of that would be extreme because it's been going on for so long, always having to stay one step ahead of the game, always having to beg, literally beg, borrow, or steal for over a decade to have the truth from being exposed. That's been going on all that time. The big case is his partners think he's straightened it out and paid off his debts, but he hadn't. He's getting paid millions of dollars, but he's stealing on top of that. It's not enough to keep that hamster wheel going. So he borrows and he steals. The methods I mentioned, you've got the PSB checks, you've got the fake forge, you've got fake business expenses, running the firm card, and from his family and his law partners. Each one of these depends on him being able to sit down and look someone in the eye and convince them that what they're doing is right when in reality that wasn't happening. And all those clients trusted him based on those. And we sat there and went through that and it may have been exhausting and I apologize for that, but he couldn't tell you about one conversation that he had that stuck with him. That's how easily it came to him. Is that relevant to your consideration of what he had to say to you? That's for y'all to decide. Couldn't name one conversation, just had that same answer that he had rehearsed and didn't want to talk about any of those individuals who trusted him as he looked you in the eye and asked you to do the same. Down to the bottom. It's not just the clients, too. It's his staff. They're doing the paperwork. They're filling all that out. He had to fast talk to them as well. This situation, I think, is akin to a Ponzi. And a Ponzi's kind of like a pyramid scheme where it depends on new money coming in to pay old investors. And it works. It'll work for a long time as long as you can keep that money coming in. But the second you can't, the second that you're out of options, it crashes and burns. That's how every Ponzi crashes and burns. And that's the situation fundamentally his finances were like. And that's the situation that was arriving in June of 2021 when he was at the scene with the victims minutes before they died and lied to everyone he would listen about. A gathering storm. The boat case, other factors that were arising, each one leading to that inevitable day of reckoning. You had the trial lawyers conference where he was confronted. Mark Tinsley was confronted by Alec. Alec, of course, denied it. Everybody's lying on Alec. Alec's telling you the truth even though everyone who knew him had no idea who he was. Everyone. No one knew who he really was. The people who came in here and said we thought this about him, not a single person knew who he really was. That's how convincing he is. But he denies this confrontation when Mark Tinsley was like, he bows up on Mark Tinsley and he's like, what you doing man about the boat case? And Mark says, you're going to have to pay money to the Beach family. Millions of dollars. Alec doesn't have that. He's barely one step ahead of the game of this. He doesn't have insurance coverage anymore or at least not a big umbrella policy. And why? Because his insurance company dropped him after the Satterfield case. Insurance company thinks the money went to the Satterfield boys but it didn't. They don't know that he's stolen it all but they don't want to insure him anymore. So he doesn't have that to help him pay the Beach case. And so what's the one hope he has? And that's the Ferris case. And it's tried and you get a verdict in February of 2021 $792,000 and eventually he tells Chris Wilson I'm going to structure those which is a lie and gets the fees sent to him in March. And it's spent in two months. But the boat case isn't going away. March says show us your books if you're telling me you're broke. I think his testimony was they said that he could probably cobble together a million dollars which I guess that's broke for him but it wasn't enough. And so they refused and that's what leads to the motion to compel. And there's been a lot of argument about oh is that going to be granted or not will the judge have granted it? What we do know is that Mark Tinsley said that's what he was seeking to do and he was seeking to do it because he had been told by the defense that he didn't have money. So he's like prove it. None of us believe that knowing what we know about you in this community. Prove it. Well Alec can't have anybody subpoenaing his financial records because it's all going to be apparent. That Forge account is going to open right up. He can't have that happen. It will all end. He'll lose his career. He will lose his livelihood. He will face investigations and consequences like he's never like he's been able to avoid his entire life. But if he can just stay one step ahead just one month longer one day longer then he's never going to have to face that accountability that he has to face. The hearing is scheduled for June 10th 2021. And no one's here to argue to you that it's definitely going to be granted. All we're arguing to you is what the witnesses said they were intending to do. And as you've seen in court over the past six weeks things happen and a process starts and once that process starts there's a conclusion to it. There's a conclusion to that. And then you heard from Tony Satterfield. who got up on the stand and talked about the fact that there was some coverage about this case as we move into the spring of 2021 and he hears from Alec and Alec lies to him and says yeah we're hoping to get this case moving and you saw the text message to that effect when the reality was that it had already been stolen. how's he going to pay that ladies and gentlemen that's millions of dollars. That's millions of dollars. And eventually eventually they're going to figure out that this money has already been paid. the insurance company thinks it's going to the right place. At some point the question is going to get asked and that alone is going to break everything apart. Ferris case this is when his paralegal finds the expense check and not the fee check and I've already told you this part of the story and you've heard the testimony but it sets off that inquiry from the seconder. So now we have this on top of everything else that we're mentioning. This is like nothing he's ever experienced. He's always been able to stay one step ahead of the game but after the vote case his appetites increased greatly. He started stealing millions of dollars and now he's running out of options and all these factors are converging. All they're converging and they're converging on one week one day. And that arrives. His father's in the hospital. There's a confrontation with Jeannie. Alec tells her, manages to ward off the conversation by saying Mr. Randolph is terminal. He of course denies that so I guess Jeannie's lying on him too. But that's what she says happened. He's working on the vote case and then the tragedy happens and it worked. It's not the only reason but it's part of the reason. The pressures on this man were unbearable and they were all reaching a crescendo the day his wife and son were murdered by him all on that day. And in the wake of this everything changes. People stop asking about these things. The community has changed like you would expect. People are concerned. They're scared. They're worried. And everything's changed. The backlash from the vote case has gone away and all of that has changed. And that's why Mark Tinsley thought his case was over. This may seem like really but who would understand that better than him? This is exactly the kind of work he did. His skills as a lawyer were understanding the emotional value of a case. Understanding the sympathies of a case. If you have a sympathetic plaintiff and an unsympathetic defendant that is in the civil world that's a big case. But if those get reversed, if those change, if all of a sudden your defendant is more sympathetic, it changes it. It changes the entirety of what Mark Tinsley's position on this case was for the Beach family that Alec was going to have to pay money. And that's what he told you from the stand. He said if Alec had been the victim of some unsuspect or some random vigilante, the entirety of the case has changed. And I'm not taking the same position. I'm not trying to demand that level of recovery. He gets a 750. Well, he gets 600 of it. Ultimately gets a 750 loan. He convinces Chris Wilson. That heads off to Ferris. That's pretty much the main thing he did after this was to make sure he could get that money, enough of it to Chris Wilson so that he would send an email to the law firm saying hey, everything's cool, I got it. It's all good. And that's what the law firm thought. It's the main thing he did in the wake of the murders of his wife and son was he made sure to stay again one step ahead of the game because he had more time now. He had time he didn't have on June 7th, but he had it now. And that's the first thing he did. It's the first thing he did. It's the main thing he did. was keep the hamster wheel going. I know it seems like a lot, but you have to consider the unique circumstances of this particular man. This particular man who has proven over and over again that he will do anything to keep that hamster wheel going and to avoid accountability. And he's been doing it for over 10 years. He just finally reached a point that he had never reached before. Of course the hearing on the motion compelled was canceled. Who would go forward with that in the wake of what's happened? That goes away. I think you heard from the testimony up there it doesn't get rescheduled until long after everything crashes and burns in September. It doesn't even get rescheduled in the wake of this. They don't have to worry about that either and the potential that had for exposing who he was. Because the second somebody looks at his accounts the second his own partner Danny Henderson looks at his accounts and says let me see him he can't do that. He can't do that. He can't even show them to his own partner. Because what's going to happen? They're going to see it too. He can't let that happen. Or everything falls apart. And he loses everything including that legacy that you heard from there is so important to him. More important than anything. I'm not going to go through all of this but this is the timeline. And you can see as we and I'll let you all look at that but you can see how this develops. How this hamster wheel continues. How he always has to be one step ahead of the game. We've talked about the red beard and the zero knighted those are the land deals that went bad. They get charged off but you have the Palmetto State Bank still dealing with him. He then appoints Russell Lafitte a conservator and borrows up to $1 million from the Plowler Girls accounts without their knowledge. And then he has to steal money from the Badger case where he's already making a huge amount of legal fees. He has to steal money from the Badger case to pay off the Plowler Girls before they turn 18. And then there's an accounting for that. Then he opens up the Forge account and it continues. $338,000 from Deion Martin. Johnny Bush, Manuel Sandinus and Ricker, $225,000. He's maxing out a million dollar line of credit. The only way to stay afloat is to beg, borrow and steal. He's maxing out a million dollar line of credit. He steals some more money but he's right back to where he was. March of 2018 he's now maxed out not only a million dollar line of credit but also a $600,000 line of credit. a line of credit almost like a credit card maxed out. Then the boat crash happens and look what happens to the figures $3.7 million $1.1 million $1 million and then you have the double homicide. this is some of the exhibits this is as you recall there'll be statements and they're in evidence showing the defendants assets on June 7th 2021 and the reds are his liabilities that one's green but it's negative and then over here that's where he was a couple months later he borrowed $750,000 and still ended up $347,000 in the hole which part of that had to cover I think it was called the most generous overdraft policy ever conceived in fairness though he did get a $5 overdraft charge anyway all right what else do we have because we've talked about a lot of things about the finances and I know that there's been a lot of that but it's really the only way to understand all the things that were affecting this middle aged outwardly successful professional man who had all these pressures upon him like no one had ever seen well we've got the pills drugs he claims [00:43:40] Speaker ?: he claims [00:43:40] Speaker 1: he's had a pill addiction for 20 years what does he say about that he says it makes him paranoid he says it makes him agitated he says opiates give him energy use your common sense about that but he also says and he even said this in the telephone interview after the side of the road that withdrawals will make you do anything anything to get rid of them that's common sense as well we know how powerful opiates can be and how the addiction of opiates can be extremely powerful the withdrawals not being dope sick can be extremely powerful but he's also saying he's taking a thousand milligrams a day and he's trying to blame all his theft on that but that's not what these records reflect they reflect an insatiable desire for money in a hamster wheel that's been going on for a long time and you don't really see the escalation from his drug dealer until March of 2021 I would ask you also one of the tenets of juries is common sense that's what you hear for an individual and a collective common sense common sense a thousand milligrams a day does that sound survivable he sat there on that stand and told you that's what he was taking and as we're going to go through this process we're going to talk about what he said on the stand and how many times on the fly that he looked you in your eyes and didn't tell you the truth he's very good at it his own partner said that he's very very good at it I leave it to you to decide whether a thousand milligrams a day is survivable of opiates and if it was that you could still engage in work have a successful practice and then on top of that engage in these complex conspiracies to steal and fool everyone and live a life and how people outwardly think that you're who you profess to be in public if you were taking a thousand milligrams a day does that make common sense I submit to you ladies and gentlemen it doesn't I have no doubt that he was taking opiate pills but I think he looked you and I would submit to you to decide whether or not he looked you in the eye and claimed the amount that's inconsistent with whatever else we know about this man that's really inconsistent with survivability as a matter of common sense he can never function at the level he's been functioning keeping up with these pressures staying one step ahead for over a decade if he was taking that much dope I would submit to you just one other lie that I would submit to you as a lie that he's trying to get you to believe to feel sympathetic for him as if the dope was the cause of the money and the cause of his issues when the reality is it wasn't this had been going on for a long time and the finances proved differently but what else about this you've seen the interviews we're going to play some clips of these interviews but I'm not going to play them all for you again you've watched them but if you have any questions go back and watch them he talks about being paranoid watch those interviews when he's with Dave Owen he doesn't look like he's withdrawing from any drugs his responses are appropriate he's not displaying any paranoia he's smooth he's focused on the events he's focused on trying to get information about the case from law enforcement officers which is interesting in its own right why is he so focused on that and in Savannah where supposedly he was detoxing he sat down as you've heard the testimony with a composite sketch artist and went through the whole process to come out with this picture which I swear is not me how do you do that how do you do that if you're on that much dough so why did he tell you that ladies and gentlemen why did he look you in the eye and tell you that as he sat there on that stand trying to explain what was going on it's interesting also that in one of the interviews with law enforcement there were three interviews June 8th June 10th and August 11th before we get to the side of the road that he mentions that Paul was a little detective that's very interesting for him to mention that because you heard from Marion Proctor Maggie's sister that Maggie called Paul that the little detective specifically in reference to Paul paying attention trying to keep Alec from taking pills why would he bring that up that's an interesting thing to bring up because that was what that was in reference to and what do we know we know we know that in May if we talk about all the pressures that are coming upon him all these financial things that we've talked about this exhausting hamster wheel that's been going on forever the need to beg borrow and still stay one step ahead and he's running out of options there on top of that we know in May that Paul sends a text to him saying mom found some pills we need to talk mom found some pills and we need to talk another pressure from Paul and Maggie on him and if you look at the texts the weekend of the ball game on June the 7th and those are in evidence Alec is not at the game and he's texting back and forth and Maggie's like don't come if you feel bad and he's like well I think I can get a late check out and then he's like at one o'clock they made me leave I'll submit to you it's a reasonable inference they were on him at this time they were watching him like a hawk opiates it's the most powerful of withdrawals and everything's coming to a head including this as well run out of money running out of options doesn't get paid in any significant way until December already stole the Ferris fees and spent that money in two months has an expensive pill habit and accountability and consequences will undo everything in his life everything that is his self-identity everything the only things that he cares about he doesn't care about lying to his partners and his family and his friends and his clients if it will delay accountability for him he'll do it in a heartbeat and all of that is about to be undone you had a good stopping point yes sir you are all right ladies and gentlemen we'll take one hour and 15 minutes for lunch