James Seidel 
State Relies Upon Stacked Inferences in Murdaugh Answer Concerning Ballistics
By James Seidel | CC News Network | Murdaugh News
COLUMBIA, S.C. — State Relies Upon Stacked Inferences in Murdaugh Answer – In its response to Alex Murdaugh’s appeal, the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office makes a sweeping claim: that “a Murdaugh family gun was used in the killings” of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
“Stacked inferences” is a legal term used in evidence law to describe a situation where a conclusion (an inference) is drawn from another inference, rather than directly from proven facts.
The statement appears in the section of the State’s brief summarizing ballistics testimony. Prosecutors point to fresh cartridge cases found near Maggie’s body, others recovered outside the Moselle gun room, and a number collected from the property’s shooting range. According to the State, all of those casings “had been loaded into, extracted, and ejected from” the same .300 Blackout firearm.
From there, the brief asserts the firearm was a Murdaugh family weapon — and by implication, the murder weapon.
State Relies Upon Stacked Inferences in Murdaugh Answer
The problem: the State’s conclusion rests on a chain of inferences that were never proven in court.
First, no murder weapon was ever recovered or presented to the jury. Without the actual rifle, prosecutors relied entirely on toolmark comparison — a forensic method under increasing scrutiny from federal courts and scientific bodies for its subjectivity and lack of standardized error rates.
Second, even if a rifle from the Moselle property once chambered the same ammunition, that does not prove it was used in the murders. Cartridge cases can remain at a location for months or years and can be produced by any matching rifle, not necessarily one in the Murdaugh household.
Third, the leap from “same firearm” to “Murdaugh family gun” assumes exclusive possession, an assumption unsupported by the record. The State’s brief offers no proof that only family members or their close associates had access to such a weapon.
Will Loving’s Testimony about Shooting the .300 Blackout with Paul
Will Loving’s trial testimony undercuts part of the State’s claim about the .300 Blackout rifle in the Murdaugh case.
According to the record, Loving — a close friend of Paul Murdaugh — testified that he had shot the black .300 Blackout rifle “a few times” on the Moselle property. This admission is important because it shows that the weapon in question was not in the exclusive possession of the Murdaugh family.
In appellate analysis, that matters. One of the inferences the State makes in its brief is that, because cartridge cases at the crime scene matched those fired from a Moselle rifle, that firearm must have been a “Murdaugh family gun” used in the murders. Loving’s testimony demonstrates that other individuals had access to and fired the rifle, which directly weakens the exclusivity assumption and, by extension, the strength of the State’s chain of inferences.
Defense asks about Paul’s habit of leaving things all over the place. Loving confirms Paul left things — including guns — everywhere.
In appellate law, stacking inferences like this is more than a rhetorical flaw — it is a legal “no-no.” The South Carolina Supreme Court, like other appellate courts, requires that each factual inference used to support a conviction be grounded in direct evidence or a reasonable inference from proven facts. When one inference depends on the validity of another, without independent proof, the chain is considered speculative and cannot legally support the verdict on appeal.
By presenting those inferences as established fact, the State’s brief blurs the line between forensic suggestion and proven truth — a distinction at the heart of Murdaugh’s appeal.
What the Prosecution and Defense Completely Missed on the .300 Blackout Shell Casings
The State’s case leaned heavily on SLED Agent Paul Greer’s testimony that .300 Blackout cartridge casings found near Maggie Murdaugh’s body matched casings discovered outside the Moselle gun room and at the property’s shooting range. Greer, an Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners (AFTE) member, told jurors that microscopic markings left during the firing process create unique “fingerprints” on shell casings that can be matched to a specific gun.
AFTE’s Method Under Fire: Subjectivity, Skewed Error Rates, and Flawed Studies
Critics of AFTE’s shell casing identification methods have long warned that the discipline suffers from fundamental scientific flaws:
Subjectivity Over Science – AFTE allows examiners to declare a match based on “sufficient agreement” of toolmarks but provides no measurable threshold for what constitutes “sufficient.” The decision is left to individual judgment, meaning two examiners could look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions. An Oregon court recently noted that such conclusions often rely on personal, implicit criteria rather than consistent, objective standards.
Misleading Error Rates – AFTE-affiliated studies often tout near-perfect accuracy rates of 1% or less. However, these figures routinely exclude or count “inconclusive” results as correct, which dramatically understates actual error. When “inconclusives” are properly counted as errors, independent re-analyses have found real-world false positive rates as high as 35% to 52% — a margin that could wrongly implicate innocent defendants.
Flawed Validation Studies – Many so-called “black-box” studies in firearms comparison have significant design flaws, undermining their ability to prove the discipline’s reliability. Without robust, bias-controlled methodology, the field’s claimed accuracy remains scientifically unproven.
Repeatability and Reproducibility Problems – Re-examinations of major firearms identification studies reveal that examiner agreement with themselves (repeatability) and with other examiners (reproducibility) is far from perfect, contradicting courtroom claims of near-infallibility.
These criticisms go to the heart of Agent Greer’s testimony. His conclusions — that the shell casings came from “Murdaugh family guns” — were presented to jurors by the State as near-certainty despite the fact that neither of Paul Murdaugh’s .300 Blackout rifles was ever recovered. Without the actual weapons, the match rested entirely on AFTE’s disputed method. In short, it appears to be junk science, per Scientific American.
Did Anyone Listen to Blanca Simpson’s Assertion on the Stand? No.
Blanca Simpson, the former Murdaugh housekeeper, has confirmed to CC News Network in an exclusive interview, and a series of photographs presented to Simpson, that she saw a white 4-door, lifted, Ford F-150 pick-up truck down by the hangar at the murder scene, on the day of the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.
Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson, the Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper, did testify during the Alex Murdaugh murder trial that she saw a white pickup truck at Moselle on the day of the murders, June 7, 2021.
During her testimony, Simpson recalled seeing a white Ford pickup truck parked at the Moselle property in the afternoon while on the 2nd floor at Moselle. She told CC News Network that the truck did not belong to the Murdaugh’s, and she initially thought it was Paul’s. This detail has raised questions among observers and investigators because it suggests that someone other than Alex, Maggie, or Paul Murdaugh may have been at Moselle earlier that day.
Why is this significant? According to Blanca, if Paul had the shotgun and the .300 Blackout in his Ford F150 truck, and it was being taken to the auto repair center, like Paul was. Then POaul would have removed said guns and placed them inside the hangar door for safe keeping, instead of leaving them in his truck to be left with the auto center. This is a big deal.
We asked Simpson if she told this information to SLED, “Yes I did and they just kind of sloughed it off”, said Simpson. Even during the trial, the state tried to say that her view must have been obstructed. Simpson told us emphatically that she recalls very vividly that she saw the white 4-door Ford F-150. “They tried to act like it was noting, but I thought it was significant, and no one has ever come forward to say it was them in the truck”, Simpson added.
If it wasn’t a Murdaugh family member, and Blanca, the family housekeeper didn’t recognize the truck, then whose truck was it there at the hangar on June 7th, 2021?
Watch Blanca tell Dick Harpootlian About the White Truck, and later to the CC News, that it was a white 4-door Ford F150 Pick-up Truck
Sound off, readers — is our assertion correct? If the State’s case leans heavily on the idea that the .300 Blackout rifle was a “Murdaugh family gun” and therefore directly ties Alex Murdaugh to the murders, doesn’t Will Loving’s testimony change that equation? By admitting he’d fired the rifle multiple times at Moselle, Loving showed that others outside the family had access to it. In an appeals context, that’s a critical detail — because it weakens the chain of exclusive possession the State wants the court to accept as fact.
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