A judge in Lexington, South Carolina, this morning scheduled an April 5 trial date for Alex Murdaugh in his double murder case following the state Supreme Court's reversal of his convictions and life sentence. Judge Debra R. McCaslin said she'll decide all major issues before trial, including the admissibility of evidence regarding Murdaugh's embezzlement from his law clients and others. "And let me tell you this, tell both of y'all, I think y'all know me pretty well: When I set a trial date, I don't do continuances, I don't do it. There better be a really good reason," said McCaslin, who has held an at-large seat with the South Carolina Circuit Courts since 2020. A jury in 2023 convicted of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime for the June 7, 2021, shooting death of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and their 22-year-old son, Paul Murdaugh. The South Carolina Supreme Court appointed McCaslin to preside over Murdaugh's case after overturning his convictions on May 13 in a 27-page opinion. The court said a clerk's comments to jurors, including telling them defense attorneys are "going to say things that will try to confuse you," were "improper external influences on the jury" that demanded reversal. Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor, said "the state will be ready" for trial on April 5. Murdaugh's lawyer Dick Harpootlian said they'll be ready unless their DNA evidence "takes longer," referring to a new defense claim that Maggie Murdaugh had another man's DNA under her fingernails. He said DNA science "is much better than what it was five years ago." McCaslin said she'll move the trial date "a couple of weeks" if needed but "please do not think that this case is going to be tried a year later, because it's not. We're going forward." Murdaugh, the 58-year-old scion of a family legal dynasty, still is serving 40 years for federal crimes related to his decades-long embezzlement scheme, including wire fraud and bank fraud. The state Supreme Court also said the trial judge, since-retired Clifton Newman, "allowed the State to go far too long and far too deep into aspects of Murdaugh's financial crimes that were not probative of the State's theory of motive, which gave rise to considerable danger of unfair prejudice, and therefore should have been excluded." Murdaugh's lawyer Jim Griffin said today the scope of the admissible financial evidence will determine the length of the second trial. "We don't think any of the financial crime evidence should come in at trial," Griffin told Judge McCaslin. "It would be helpful to us ... to know if we're going to have to defend against that during the trial." The judge said she'd "like to address all pretrial matters beforehand, because when I say April the 5th, we're picking a jury, and going forward, all those issues should be decided by then." McCaslin worked for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond after high school before majoring in political science at the College of Charleston in 1990. She earned her law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1993. #law #crime #court - @meghannmcuniff