True Crime writer and former trial lawyer reacts to Murdaugh trial

GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Former Upstate trial lawyer and now “True Crime” writer Cathy Pickens shares her expert opinion with Fox Carolina’s Anna Arinder, about some of the points brought up in the Alex Murdaugh trial so far.

Anna: We’ve talked about some of the verbiage that’s been used and maybe what he said or didn’t say, the switch of “I did him” or “they did him”. How important is that to know and get it right?

Cathy Pickens: " We’re watching a trial unfold like this, in the moment, we’re hanging on every word, but I also think juries tend to look at the bigger picture. They have a lot of time, you know, after they get off, off for the day to sit around and think about what they’ve heard, and they’re really focused on paying attention. We don’t know what a Jury is going to do, we don’t really know what they’re going to hear, and we don’t know how they’re going to piece the puzzle together until it happens.

Anna: “How important is it to get forensic evidence correct, and maybe some of the lack of questioning that happened that we’re starting to see during this trial?”

Cathy Pickens: " It’s never gonna be like it is on a television drama is always going to have come through human hands. It’s always going to be open to question and I think in this case because it was a rural area, this is not the kind of thing that happens a lot that people are going to be questioned whether this evidence was handled correctly and that door is going to be open just because people are going to expect it to be open, for instance, blood spatter evidence, I mean, it’s very different if you go up and check on somebody or try to revive somebody who’s bleeding what you’re wearing on your skin or your clothes It’s going to be very different than what we would see if you had fired a gun and there had been back spatter from that.

I mean, it’s a tragedy all the way around. There have been so many lives affected and so many layers, pull back that while you know, as I sit back and talk about it as a puzzle, to the people who are really putting the pieces together. It’s not just a puzzle, it’s their lives.”

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