How often do you see non-emergency medical transportation patients (ambulatory, wheelchair-bound) leave the ED by EMS because they don't have a ride or left their wheelchair at home?

And their Medicaid transportation broker pays for it?

Hopefully long gone aren't the old days where you discharged the patient and they waited in the ED lobby until they got a taxi token.

The "Book my Ride" folks at Medicaid need to get a clue.

By Jenn Wood / FITSNews / January 16, 2024

After former South Carolina chief justice Jean Toal issued a decisive ruling on Tuesday limiting testimony in Alex Murdaugh’s upcoming jury tampering hearing, it appears as though the saga of the infamous ‘egg juror’ has been put on the back burner.

Based on a new defense filing, though, there’s a new juror saga that could be worth following – assuming Toal’s tight parameters for the hearing permit it to be introduced.

During a status conference on Tuesday ahead of Murdaugh’s big evidentiary hearing later this month, Toal indicated she only wanted to hear from the 12 jurors who found Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, at the family’s hunting property near Islandton, S.C.

The only other witness on Toal’s list?

Embattled Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill, who stands accused of tampering with Murdaugh’s jury – purportedly to obtain a guilty verdict and sell copies of her book about the trial, Behind the Doors of Justice.

Not making the witness cut? The egg juror.

Toal made it abundantly clear during this week’s status conference that she is not inclined to give Murdaugh’s attorneys any leeway in terms of assailing Hill’s credibility – which has completely collapsed in the aftermath of the trial due to a host of criminal and ethics investigations into her conduct (not to mention alleged obstruction related to those investigations).

That means Murdaugh’s legal team – led by attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin – must try and win their motion for a new trial within the narrow parameters prescribed by Toal.

Of the the twelve deliberating jurors expected to testify at the hearing on January 29, 2024, one of them – juror No. 630 – appears critical to the case Harpootlian and Griffin plan on putting forward.

An affidavit from juror No. 630 was included as part of the defense team’s original motion for a new trial submitted last September. This document contains what would appear to be the most problematic allegations for the state. In her affidavit, juror No. 630 stated the following:

• “Toward the end of the trial, after the President’s Day break but before Mr. Murdaugh testified, the Clerk of Court, Rebecca Hill, told the jury ‘not to be fooled’ by the evidence presented by Mr. Murdaugh’s attorneys, which l understood to mean that Mr. Murdaugh would lie when he testified.”

• “She also instructed the jury to ‘watch him closely’ immediately before he testified, including ‘look at his actions’ and ‘look at his movements,’ which I understood to mean that he was guilty.”

• “The foreperson, juror No. 826, criticized the former foreperson, juror No. 589, for handing Mr. Murdaugh a box of tissues when he was crying on the stand while testifying about his murdered son. She told the jury we cannot interact with Mr. Murdaugh because ‘that is what the defense wants us to do.'"

According to a supplemental filing by Murdaugh’s defense team late Tuesday afternoon, there appears to be more to the story of juror No. 630 – and it appears to be very much tied to the egg juror.

According to the defense’s latest supplemental briefing, information received from Colleton County within the last few days proves Hill fabricated the Facebook post that led to the egg juror’s dismissal – and then lied to presiding judge Clifton Newman about it.

But Hill also allegedly failed to share with Newman similar allegations against another juror – one who was inclined to find Murdaugh guilty.

Within the discovery, Murdaugh’s attorneys found an email sent to Hill dated February 24, 2023 by someone in Indiana who was watching the trial online through a Facebook link. This individual indicated the court ought to know about statements that were being made within a livestream chat – statements which she attached to her email.

In the chat, an individual named Lucas Pearce told viewers his ex-wife was on the jury – and that she was speaking out of turn and telling others she thought Murdaugh was “already guilty just because he’s a man.”

Hill never reported this email to the court. Not only that, Murdaugh’s attorneys believe it gave her the idea to allegedly fabricate the Facebook post involving the egg juror.

“Ms. Hill did not act on the email because the juror at issue purportedly was going to vote guilty, which conformed to her interests,”Murdaugh’s defense team stated in its latest filing. “But Ms. Hill believed juror 785 might not vote guilty, based on the conversations with the jury foreperson to which she admitted in her interview with SLED.

The emailed Facebook post gave her the idea to invent one about juror 785, which she would say she saw on the ‘Walterboro Word of Mouth’ group instead of having received it by an email she would otherwise be asked to produce.”

According to the defense team, when Newman asked Hill to produce a copy of the Facebook post relating to the egg juror, she lied and said it had been deleted. They even allege Hill went as far as enlisting her staff to assist in corroborating that “she had seen it posted somewhere but it was subsequently deleted.”

Why did Hill allegedly lie? According to the filing, her “illegal private conversations with the jury foreperson made her believe Juror 785 might vote ‘not guilty’ and she wanted to remove her from the jury.”

Because Hill never forwarded it to anyone, the tip about a juror allegedly stating their opinion related to Murdaugh being guilty appears not to have been investigated by anyone … not by the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO), the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the office of S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson or the court.

By contrast, when Hill forwarded an allegedly fabricated tip that a juror had expressed the opinion that Murdaugh was not guilty, it received a four-alarm response by all of the above parties.

To add to this already confusing situation, FITSNews recently obtained an email sent during the trial between several SLED agents. In the email – dated February 27, 2023 – the agents discussed their investigation of a “Twitter Juror Tip” received related to the egg juror. This tip has never been mentioned in any court documents, but if it was indeed a separate tip – it would mean the egg juror was reported on at least three separate occasions through three different platforms.

The egg juror denied allegations contained in the two tips of which we are aware through her affidavit.

What allegations did this third tip raise? And who sent it?

Like SLED, our news outlet is “still digging” into the egg juror saga – as well as the broader allegations of jury tampering against Hill.

Will any of this change former chief justice Toal’s mind regarding the testimony or exhibits she permits in the upcoming evidentiary hearing?

Who knows … but it could lend credence to Murdaugh’s attorneys, who insist the removal of the egg juror was intentional and targeted due to her potential to hang the jury.

Meanwhile, Hill’s failure to notify the court about a juror alleged to have stated a bias against Murdaugh raises additional questions about her conduct during the trial – and would certainly support the defense’s theory that she was working to secure a guilty verdict as opposed to impartially administering justice.

This story is online here.

By James Pollard / The Associated Press / January 16, 2024

Alex Murdaugh faces a steep uphill battle in his push for a new murder trial after a state judge on Tuesday limited witness questioning and set a high burden of proof surrounding accusations that the court clerk tampered with the jury during last year's sensational proceedings.

Even if Murdaugh's lawyers prove that Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill told jurors not to believe his testimony and pressured the jury into reaching a guilty verdict, they must also demonstrate that she did so with prejudice against Murdaugh, former South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Jean Toal ruled.

Toal also said she will not ask about other wide-ranging accusations of wrongdoing against Hill, including that the elected official misused public funds and plagiarized parts of her new book on the Murdaugh saga.

Toal took over the request for a new trial after the judge overseeing the case, Clifton Newman, recused himself late last year.

Hill has sworn that she did not ask jurors about Murdaugh's guilt and never suggested that he committed the murders.

State police are investigating the jury tampering and misuse of office allegations against Hill but have not charged her with any crimes.

Her attorneys did acknowledge last month, however, that she had submitted a BBC reporter's writing to her co-author "as if it were her own words."

Evidentiary hearings beginning Jan. 29 will include Hill and the deliberating jurors. The judge will not seek testimony from Newman. She also expressed doubt that she would admit thousands of Hill's emails as exhibits.

"I'm very, very reluctant to turn this hearing about juror contact into a wholesale exploration about every piece of conduct by the clerk alleged to have been improper on its own, indicative of her characteristics or personality, or anything of that nature," Toal said.

"This is not the trial of Ms. Hill," she later added, emphasizing that the inquiry is focused on the court clerk's interactions with jurors and the jury's ability to impartially reach a verdict.

Murdaugh is serving life imprisonment without parole after a jury found him guilty last March of killing his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, in June 2021. He also faces an additional 27 years after pleading guilty in November to stealing millions of dollars.

Toal's narrow rules were tougher than those sought by Murdaugh's lawyers during the Tuesday hearing, held to determine the scope of the three-day evidentiary hearing later this month.

Attorney Jim Griffin argued that prejudice should be assumed. The state carries the burden of proving that "unauthorized third-party communication" such as Hill's alleged interaction was "harmless," Griffin said.

Toal sided with the state, noting that the court has an affidavit from only one deliberating juror who swears that outside contact occurred. She said she wants to hear specific evidence about how the juror perceived Hill's alleged comments.

Toal struck another blow to the defense by blocking questions about what effect the jury tampering alleged by Murdaugh's lawyers might have had on jury deliberations. She will ask jurors only about its possible impact on their final conclusion, not how they reached their decision.

"No one — not myself or anyone else — is going to be asking a juror about the specifics of their deliberation," Toal said.

State prosecutor Creighton Waters had asked Toal to prevent a "far-ranging fishing expedition" into the post-trial revelations of Hill's plagiarism and wiretapping charges against her son.

Waters said conversations with jurors and clerk's staff indicate the verdict was not influenced by anything "unprofessional or untoward."

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian argued that Hill's new book — which is currently unpublished "for the foreseeable future," according to her legal team — is relevant because it establishes a motive. He said Hill told an assistant during the trial that a guilty verdict would be good for her book sales.

Toal reprimanded the longtime lawyer for his continued suggestion that Hill sought to enrich herself by pushing jurors toward a guilty verdict.

"I hope that's the last time you're gonna repeat that until I ask for that again," Toal said at one point. "Let's move on from that."

The evidentiary hearings will be on the record and held in open court. Court television cameras will be allowed but cannot focus on the testifying jurors, who will be referred to by their number and not their names.

Toal also expressed openness to other ways of ensuring the jurors' privacy, such as obscuring their faces during testimony.

A lawyer for two jurors asked that Toal deny news outlets entry into the courtroom to limit the "litigative stress" on his clients.

Attorney Joe McCulloch suggested that Toal avoid the "distraction and the imposition" of the news media by allowing journalists to instead watch the examinations elsewhere on a livestream.

"No damage would be done to the right of the public to know and participate in the proceedings," he argued, to no avail.

This story is online here.