The “No Notes” Jury Instruction

A jury instruction of “No Notes” astonished McNeal. Why that instruction and more mattered to her.

From the first day of the Alex Murdaugh trial, the judge instructed the jury that no notes were to be taken during this highly technical and complex trial of what would become six weeks in duration. The judge knew what a complicated trial this was going to be and it would be among the first in the state to extensively utilize cell phone data, On Star data, and GPS data. There would also be a DNA presentation and “Geo-fencing” as well as other jargon pertinent to whatever high-tech evidence was to come.

Without a doubt, all the details thrown at the jury would require hyper-attention with the implication that each juror would possess a remarkable memory. The result – the decision to bar any note-taking left the jurors naked when it came to organizing and analyzing the extensive amount of evidence they had heard over the six weeks. Did that speak, from the beginning, to a courtroom culture that embraced a lack of fairness in Murdaugh’s trial?

McNeal has been fortunate to have gained access to many in the Murdaugh story. Her contact list is impressive and extensive. Her conclusions are, in part, as a result of what she has learned over the years from those who were either a party to the events of that night, or close to the investigation.

You will learn her thoughts about John Marvin Murdaugh, whom she came to know as a kind man trying hard to find the truth about all aspects of that night, as he keeps his young family and his wife steady as you go.

Her thoughts about Buster Murdaugh and his now wife, Brooklyn White Murdaugh, and their kindness exhibited to a young woman at the trial introduced to them by McNeal outside of the microphones and the circus.

Who knew when she sat behind Alex Murdaugh and to his right, at the invitation of Becky Hill, in Walterboro, South Carolina, that the trial and its outcome would become her single focus over the subsequent three years.

Since she expressed just as the trial was closing and over the last three years, that Alex Murdaugh did not have a fair trial, McNeal has lost friends and even business associates. Regardless, she continues to believe that every individual is granted the inalienable right to a fair trial and a presumption of innocence until the verdict is read, and that precept has always been a guiding principle in her life even if the price is steep.

Having a background working with people who have been challenged in a courthouse to prove their innocence, she has held not just their hands, but also the hands of their families as justice rumbles along a rocky path to an uncertain conclusion. It was a defining moment in the trial regarding the DNA when she felt called to act. She answered the call.

In the south, folks talk about “their people.” Shay McNeal is a descendant of the Pride family of Virginia. She is haunted by the fact that the powerful John Pride, now a forgotten man, who was the President of the Virginia Senate when he refused to sign the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added, paid a price as did many of his peers. They understood the Sixth Amendment was needed and why a fair trial was essential and remains so today. It is intended to protect citizens, and be a barrier between them and an uncontrolled government. The promise of due process that is fair must be, not just guaranteed, but fulfilled at all costs.

Understanding this legacy was fundamental to McNeal. McNeal’s great grandmother, Mary Pride, of the hamlet of Pride in western Kentucky, was the mother of Elizabeth Pride Evans, McNeal’s grandmother who had passed away before McNeal’s birth. Nonamama, as she was called, was quite the rebel herself, and wanted to make an impression on her eldest great grandchild.

McNeal often sat at her feet listening to the family stories about your “responsibilities and duty” and it was a lot to take in – it was scary. By age nine, just coming up on her 10th birthday, with McNeal leaving with her family for Japan, she realized the aged woman whom she called Nonamama might pass away before she could once again be able to sleep snugged up beside her. She did die while Shay’s family was abroad. But Nonamama had scored. She planted that euphemistic seed in a quiet corner of Shay McNeal’s psyche where it continues to reside.

The wonderful woman with the single braid circled around her head like a crown had sown a seed in the fertile mind of a young woman that would quietly take root. Through the years, it grew and over time blossomed. Cultivating the seed Nonamama planted would eventually manifest itself as a deep understanding of what it is like to be a daughter of liberty and what responsibilities accompany that accidental birth privilege.

There is now a bouquet that McNeal nourishes as it resides in that quiet corner of her mind reminding her how grateful and protective she is of our extraordinary Bill of Rights, as those rights are tested everyday. She believes that, as a country, we do the best we can to live up to its promise, but sometimes we fail.

That is why answering the call is imperative and often for her the quest has not been without pain. We can only hope that Judge Debra R. McCaslin, who will oversee the new trial, allows not just note taking, but a more level playing field.