Settlement does not end the job for justice in Murdaugh cases | Opinion

This is about much more than money.

Granted, a staggering sum of money – $15 million – is involved.

That’s the settlement announced last week in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a beautiful, 19-year-old child of the South Carolina Lowcountry who was killed in a boat crash on an inky night in Archer’s Creek four years ago.

After all the days and nights of agony, perhaps the family of Mallory Beach can find some rest with this measure of accountability.

Their lawyer, Mark Tinsley of Allendale, reached that settlement with insurers for the Parker’s Kitchen convenience store chain that sold beer to the late Paul Murdaugh hours before he slammed a speeding boat into a bridge piling at Parris Island.

But Mallory’s life and death cannot be confined by dollars.

Not even to the tune of $500,000 per beer that was sold to the 19-year-old Murdaugh boy using his older brother’s ID.

And neither does this one settlement close the Lowcountry Pandora’s box that spilled secrets out for all to see, beginning with the Murdaugh boat crash.

First, not everyone has settled in the wrongful death suit. Prominently missing is Paul Murdaugh’s father and the boat owner, Alex Murdaugh.

He represents the fourth generation of a family that ran the Lowcountry’s system of justice as 14th Judicial Circuit solicitors for 86 years. Alex was a badge-brandishing volunteer in that office on the night of the boat crash – as well as the night two years later when his son Paul and wife, Maggie, were killed at his own hands.

And during his years of pilfering millions of dollars from clients of his family’s bigger-than-life law firm in Hampton, according to scores of charges he has yet to face as he sits in jail on two life sentences.

But larger questions still need answers, or more public airing.

What happened to the investigation of obstruction of justice regarding Alex and his late father on the night of the boat crash?

What happened to the investigation into irregularities in the initial investigations?

Attorney Joe McCulloch of Columbia, who represents a boat passenger the Murdaughs tried to blame for the crash, said at the time the state attorney general’s office needed to “further explore the inexplicable disappearance of important evidence and other lapses by the initial investigating authorities.”

You get to the root of all that, by exposing it, and you’ll get to the root of the Lowcountry’s deadly Murdaugh Syndrome.

Who has put a clearer definition on conflicts of interest?

Duffie Stone, today’s 14th Circuit solicitor, recused his office in the boat crash case because of its ties to the Murdaughs, but was slow to do that two years later when Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered.

It was the same for Circuit Court Judge Carmen Mullen. She recused herself in the boat crash case, but did not do so in signing off on a huge settlement at Alex Murdaugh’s request – involving millions of dollars that it was later discovered went to Murdaugh, not the victims it was intended for

That picking and choosing gives a bad look to the judicial system, unnecessarily.

And it led attorney Eric Bland of Columbia, who blew the cover off Alex Murdaugh’s widespread financial theft as he represented the victims bilked in this case, and First Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe to file complaints against Mullen.

They told the state’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel and Commission on Judicial Conduct that she enabled Alex Murdaugh to hide his insurance coverage and details about his finances at a time he was being sued in the boat crash case.

What has the state court system done with those complaints?

Pascoe wrote: “When wealthy and politically connected individuals are treated as a privileged class by members of the judiciary, it erodes public trust in government and the fair administration of law.”

That has been the issue larger than money in the Murdaugh cases since the night Mallory Beach was killed.

The state attorney general’s office has been aggressive in pursuing justice for all.

But the job is not finished.

David Lauderdale may be reached at [email protected]