ST. MATTHEWS, S.C. — The former court clerk in South Carolina who helped out with the murder trial of attorney Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty Monday to criminal charges for showing sealed court exhibits to a photographer and lying about it in court.
Former Colleton County Clerk of Court Mary Rebecca “Becky” Hill pleaded guilty in Colleton County Circuit Court to four charges — obstruction of justice and perjury for showing a reporter photographs that were sealed court exhibits and then lying about it — as well as two counts of misconduct in office for taking bonuses and promoting through her public office a book she wrote on the trial.
Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Hill to a year of probation. He told Hill her sentence would have been much harsher had prosecutors found that she had tampered with the Murdaugh jury.
Hill read a short statement asking Taylor for a chance to do better.
“There is no excuse for the mistakes I made. I’m ashamed of them,” she said.
Murdaugh's defense attorney, Dick Harpootlian, said he wasn't surprised by the guilty plea.
"More importantly, the agency expected to impartially investigate these charges has a vested interest in avoiding any outcome that would question the verdict of the initial Alex Murdaugh murder trial," he said in a statement. "If Becky admittedly perjured herself in the jury tampering hearing held by Judge Toal, what else could she have lied about?"
Hill was in charge of taking care of the jury, overseeing exhibits and helping the judge during Murdaugh’s six-week trial, which ended with murder convictions for killing his wife and son. The case involved power, danger, money and privilege and an attorney whose family had lorded over his small South Carolina county for nearly a century.
Hill has played a prominent part as Murdaugh appeals his convictions and a sentence of life without parole. His lawyers said that Hill tried to influence jurors to vote guilty and that she was biased against Murdaugh for her book.
South Carolina criminal defense attorney Dayne Phillips said he doesn’t think Hill's guilty plea will affect Murdaugh's attempts at a retrial.
"That’s still their first issue. The first issue they raise is whether he was denied his constitutional right to a fair trial by an impartial jury free from outside influence. That issue is still in play on appeal," he said in a phone interview Monday. "The state’s just not prosecuting her for it."
NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos agreed.
"The crimes to which she pleaded guilty don’t have to do with tampering with the jury, and the judge noted that. And that’s the key, because if she somehow influenced the jury, then that would be a much stronger argument for appeal," he said. "But if she was showing it to reporters, still a crime, still the end of that career, but it’s not necessarily the kind of thing that would get Murdaugh a new trial.
"Still, it’s a huge black eye and a huge pain for prosecutors," Cevallos added.
During Monday’s hearing, Solicitor Rick Hubbard told the judge that a journalist told investigators that Hill showed graphic crime scene photos to several media members. He didn’t name the journalist.
Murdaugh is also serving a separate sentence of decades in prison for admitting stealing millions of dollars from settlements for clients who suffered horrible injuries or deaths — and from his family’s law firm.
An initial appeal by Murdaugh’s lawyers was denied. But Judge Jean Toal said that she wasn’t sure Hill told the truth about her dealings with jurors and that Hill was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” status.
Some of Hill’s charges concern Murdaugh’s murder trial. The arrest warrant said Hill violated a judge’s order to keep sealed photographs from the public. A second warrant said Hill lied to Toal at a January 2024 hearing when Toal asked: “Did you allow anyone from the press to view the sealed exhibits?”
One of the charges — misconduct in office — involved money that investigators said Hill took for herself. They said that included nearly $10,000 meant for bonuses from federal money meant to improve child support collection and about $2,000 from the Clerk of Court’s office.
The warrant on the other misconduct charge said Hill used her public role as clerk of court to promote her book about the Murdaugh trial on social media.
Hill was also accused in May 2024 of 76 counts of ethics violations. Officials said Hill allowed a photo of Murdaugh in a holding cell to be taken to promote her book about the trial and used county money to buy dozens of lunches for her staff, prosecutors and a vendor.
Hill also struck a deal with a documentary maker to use the county courtroom in exchange for promoting her book about the trial, which she later admitted had plagiarized passages, according to the South Carolina Ethics Commission complaint.
Hill resigned in March 2024 during the last year of her four-year term, citing the public scrutiny of Murdaugh’s trial and saying she wanted to spend time with her grandchildren.
