Murdaugh defense team's testimony comes under scrutiny from returning state witnesses

You are dead wrong. If you think I've come in here and told this jury something because of money when we were talking about two people who were brutally murdered, then you're you're headed in the wrong direction. You think he did it? I don't have I don't have an opinion. I don't have the benefit of the materials you have. Sakes witnesses took the stand to refute the testimony from the defense's case in the Alec Murdoch murder trial. Even Attorney General Allen Wilson got into the case directing a state expert on the stand and it ended up taking an entire day as we get close to the end of this trial. Or Ann Emerson was in the courtroom today and who don't we hear from? Well today the state brought back key witnesses including a crime scene expert, a pathologist, former law firm partners and friends of Alec Murdoch, all in the hopes of hooking a hole in the defense's case that Alec could not be the murder of his wife and son.

Objection, your honor hearsay. Objection, your honor. Objection, your honor. Going off on another tangent. Defense Attorney Dick Harputlian protecting the testimony his team presented this week to the jury. Because he destroyed your firm, he stole millions of dollars you had to pay back. He deceived you.

From the close friends and law partners who were fooled by Alec Murdoch for years, Harputlian questioned their motives. And if you're implying that I will come in here and somehow shade truth in any way because of that, that's, I would take high offense with that Mr. Harputlian. I'm not concerned about your high offense. Are you angry at him for stealing your money? I have no feeling one way or the other. I don't have any feeling about Alec Murdoch betraying you and stealing your money. And the pathologist who told the jury unequivocally, Paul did not suffer a contact gunshot wound to the head as the defense expert testified.

In my 20 plus years of experience doing autopsies and seeing contact gunshot, contact shotgun wounds to the head, which are associated with massive gas expansion in the skull, this entire face he would have had tears, the eyes would have been either hanging down or lost, blown out. There's no way that these features are consistent with a contact shotgun wound to the head. To the crime scene expert who undermined the defense theory that Alec was just too tall to be the killer. Can a person be on their knee and get the same angle and be standing and get the same angle? Yes, sir. Can a six foot four person and a five foot four person still shoot the same angle just at different distances? Absolutely. Defense attorney Jim Griffin did his best to water down the latest testimony. A shooter at 6'4", it would be an unnatural position for them to fire at that low of a gun.

And that's the part I disagree with. I don't know how Mr. Sutton could publish an opinion about what's natural or unnatural. Tomorrow morning, the jury is headed to Moselle for a visit to the crime scene. And when they return, we're going to hear closing arguments, the charges to the jury from the judge. And then Alec Murdoch's fate is going to be left in the hands of 12 jurors working here in Walterboro. I'm Ann Emerson, ABC News 4.

Thanks Ann. And there's been an updated decision from the court when it comes to the planned visit out to Moselle. Judge says certain media members will be allowed to tour the property. That visit's going to come after the jury sees the site. It will not happen at the same time. So this first one, Ronnie Crosby, why did they have Ronnie Crosby come back? Do you know? Wow. Well, you heard what you had to say, right? It was just really powerful in terms of, you know, we've talked about this a bit about Mrs.

Drew's field of expertise on hog hunting. A little hog hunting? Yeah, and he hog. We had another day of hog hunting. We'll limit the comments about hog hunting. But Ronnie was very clear on you can kill those hogs during the day. So, but he went into a lot of other areas. And as you heard from the sound clip, he was challenged very strongly by defense attorney Dick Harputley.

And it was a moment. It was a moment. And he was pretty much saying, you are impugning my integrity. I think that's what I read. We've got another clip from Ronnie. Did you have something to add before we go there? Hog hunting? Stay away from that? Or is that too controversial? No. I thought Ronnie and I think Mark Ball as well.

I think the overarching point of getting them back up there, because not a lot of new ground was covered with either of them. The overarching point I felt was pretty clear. One of the last questions Creighton Waters asked both of them is, did Alec Murdoch lie to your face for years? And they both said, yeah, he did. It's evident. And they never suspected that. But basically, I thought it was very powerful because they supposedly thought they knew him and here they're here to say that, no, we did not know them. They didn't cross quite well for the state.

Yeah. And I thought it was, I don't know how effective, but I thought it was smart of Dick Harputley and to attack Ronnie Crosby and to attack his motivations and to plant that seed of doubt. I'd let that speak for itself, but it was, whether it worked or not, whether it is going to plant that seed of doubt, but I thought he needed to do it because it's a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to think. You're just up here because you're mad because he costs you money.

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