CNN
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Jurors in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial will be allowed to visit the family’s sprawling estate in South Carolina where Murdaugh’s wife and son were shot dead, Judge Clifton Newman ruled on Monday.

Murdaugh’s defense attorney had requested the jury be allowed to see the estate, known as Moselle, while state prosecutors opposed the trip, saying the property had changed since the June 2021 killings. The judge did not set a date for the viewing.

Fresh off his contentious testimony, Murdaugh’s defense team is calling their final witnesses Monday as the disgraced attorney’s murder trial pushes its way toward closing arguments.

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said in court the defense expects to rest by the end of Monday, and the prosecution said it will have a few further rebuttal witnesses afterward, with the aim to move to closing arguments on Wednesday.

The final witnesses come after Murdaugh, 54, took the stand on Thursday and Friday to forcefully deny that he killed his wife Margaret and his son Paul, who were shot dead at the dog kennels at their family estate on June 7, 2021. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings.

“I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever,” he said.

Since the night of the murders, Murdaugh had said that he was not at the kennels that night and that he had returned from a visit to his mother’s home to find their dead bodies. Yet under oath, he admitted that he had been at the kennels and that he had lied to police about his whereabouts.

He further admitted that he had repeatedly lied to his family, his clients and his law partners and had stolen millions of dollars over the course of roughly two decades as a high-powered lawyer in the region. He faces 99 separate charges for these financial crimes.

Murdaugh blamed his lies to police on “paranoid thinking” related to an opioid drug addiction.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he added. “I don’t think I was capable of reason, and I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did.”

The decision to testify in his own defense was a risky but necessary one for Murdaugh, legal experts said.

That’s because the prosecution pointed to a huge question throughout the trial that he had to answer: Multiple witnesses identified Murdaugh’s voice in a video clip filmed at the family’s dog kennels, which authorities say was recorded shortly before the killings and near where the bodies were found.

That video is at the heart of the prosecution’s case against Murdaugh. At the same time, there is no direct evidence – no witnesses, no smoking guns, no blood-soaked clothes – proving the disbarred attorney killed his family.

Instead, the prosecution’s case against Murdaugh has focused on circumstantial evidence about his opportunity and motive. In particular, they have tried to prove he was at the crime scene that night, worked to show he lied to investigators and painted a picture of a fraudster who killed his wife and son in a desperate bid to distract the investigations into his actions.

For the defense, that evidence amounts to little more than “speculation” and “conjecture,” Harpootlian has argued. They have highlighted Murdaugh’s loving relationships with his family and ridiculed the prosecution’s focus on what they are framing as irrelevant financial misconduct.