In the minutes before Judge Clifton Newman delivered his sentence for Alex Murdaugh - two life sentences, consecutively, for the murders of his wife and son - he sat back, rocking his chair back and forth, and addressed the defendant directly.

In the culmination of the once-prominent lawyer’s fall from grace, Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday after being convicted of murdering his wife and son.

Judge Clifton Newman asked Murdaugh if he had anything he wanted to say before sentencing him to two consecutive life terms, and the South Carolina attorney maintained his innocence.

Alex Murdaugh, the patriarch of a once-powerhouse legal dynasty in South Carolina, received two consecutive life sentences after being found guilty of murdering his wife and youngest son.

“I am innocent. I would never hurt my wife, Maggie, and I would never hurt my son,” Murdaugh said as he addressed the court Friday before his sentencing.

But prosecutor Creighton Waters said the only just consequence for Murdaugh would be a life sentence.

“This man should never be allowed to be among free, law-abiding citizens again,” Waters said.

Former influential South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh received life prison sentences Friday for murdering his wife and 22-year-old son.

Alex Murdaugh was convicted Thursday of killing 55-year-old Maggie and Paul, 22, in a June 2021 incident outside their Islandton, South Carolina family home. He vocally maintained his innocence at the Friday sentencing hearing, claiming he would never hurt his wife and son.

A defense witness and former law partner of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh testified Wednesday that the crime scene where Murdaugh’s wife and son were murdered wasn’t properly cleared.

Mark Ball told jurors that he and more than a dozen other people – Murdaugh’s former law partners and friends – walked around the crime scene shortly after Murdaugh’s wife Maggie and son Paul were murdered. He said he arrived just 45 minutes after Murdaugh called 911, but before police arrived, The New York Post reported.

Alex Murdaugh’s dead son, Paul, caused him no end of trouble when he was alive — and may help convict him of double murder from beyond the grave.

As the sensational Murdaugh trial wraps up its third week at the Colleton County courthouse in Walterboro, SC, the 54-year-old lawyer, accused of murdering his wife and troubled son in June 2021, has appeared much less sure of himself than he did when he was all smug smiles as the trial began on Jan. 23.

Murdaugh, who has since been disbarred, has sobbed openly at times.