✏️ Legal Pad
Castles Made of Sand: An Update on the Zach Hughes Case
Back in December, I wrote about the Zachary Hughes trial. If you missed it, the short version is this: Hughes was convicted of murder in the death of Christina Parcell, he never denied the killing, and the real fight was never about what happened. It was about why. The legal line between murder committed with malice and a killing committed under a sincere belief that a child was in danger is a narrow one, and I wrote that whether the jury was ever properly equipped to walk that line would be the central issue on appeal.
I also wrote that I would not be betting against Andy Moorman and Mark Moyer. This week, that appeal took a significant step.
This past Tuesday, the South Carolina Court of Appeals granted Hughes’ request to pause his appeal and send the case back down to the Greenville County trial court. The purpose of the remand is narrow but important: the trial court will now decide whether Hughes is entitled to a new trial based on what his lawyers describe as after-discovered evidence. It is a procedural victory, not a merits victory. But procedure is often where these cases are won and lost.
Here’s what changed: at Hughes’ trial, his defense turned on his belief that Parcell’s young daughter was being sexually abused. His attorneys argued that evidence recovered during a related investigation was central to explaining his state of mind. The State argued that those allegations were speculative, unsupported, and incapable of being proven, and the Judge excluded the evidence from the jury’s consideration. Hughes was convicted in February 2025.
Thirteen months later, the State had quite the change of tune. In March 2026, Bradly Post, Parcell’s fiancé and one of the State’s principal witnesses against Hughes, pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse material charges. At that plea hearing, an assistant attorney general (a different prosecuting body than the Solicitor’s Office) described investigators recovering hundreds of images and videos, and Post agreed under oath that the State’s factual summary was “substantially true and correct.”
You do not need a law degree to see the problem. The State told one judge the abuse allegations could not be proven in order to keep that evidence away from Hughes’ jury. Then, a little over a year later, the State stood in front of another judge and secured a guilty plea built on the very conduct it had called “unprovable.” Hughes’ lawyers argue there are only two explanations, and neither one is comfortable for the State: either it discovered new evidence after the trial that validated the defense, or it knowingly misrepresented the evidence the first time around. The later is a big deal. As in prosecutorial misconduct kind of big deal.
The Court of Appeals was careful not to reach that question. It expressed no opinion on the merits. Instead, it sent the case back for the trial court to apply South Carolina’s five-part test for a new trial based on after-discovered evidence; a demanding standard that requires Hughes to show, among other things, that the evidence surfaced after trial, could not have been found earlier through due diligence, is material, and would probably change the outcome. If any of this feels familiar, it should. It is the same road Alex Murdaugh is traveling.
This is exactly what appeals are for. They are not about relitigating the facts or giving a convicted defendant a second bite at the apple. They are about making sure the law was followed and that the jury actually had what it needed to do its job. Nowhere does that matter more than in an emotionally charged case where public sentiment runs miles ahead of legal nuance.
There is a long way to go. The same judge whose evidentiary rulings sit at the center of this dispute is likely the one who will now weigh whether those rulings can stand. But the door that was closed at trial is open again, and that is no small thing. Like most things in law, it’s still a gamble. But like I said, I just wouldn’t bet against Mark and Andy.
💡 Sidebar
Lawyer Trick No. 72: The Choose Your Own Adventure Novel
If you’re of a certain age, you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Turn to page 42 to open the mysterious door. Turn to page 88 to walk away. The whole gimmick was that the reader controlled the story. Make good choices, and the hero survives. Make bad ones, and you get eaten by something on page 90.
Practicing law with me works more or less the same way. Opposing counsel is the reader. They get to choose the adventure.
The overwhelming default, and I mean 99 percent of my practice, is the pleasant one. When opposing counsel is cordial, professional, and honest with me, I return the favor without a second thought. I grant the reasonable extension. I pick up the phone before I file the motion. I assume the missed deadline was a calendar mistake and not a scheme. We disagree about the case, sometimes sharply, and then we go get lunch. Most lawyers I deal with are good people doing hard work, and those cases run smoothly precisely because everyone chose the cooperative page.
That is the adventure I would like everyone to pick. It is genuinely better for the clients, it is better for the courts, and it is a great deal more pleasant for me.
But there is another page. And every so often, opposing counsel decides to turn to it.
If a lawyer chooses to be rude, to shade the truth, to misrepresent the record, or to simply be disagreeable for sport, the story changes. At that point, they have made themselves my special project. I read every word of every document. I stop extending the professional courtesies that are extended, not owed. Every representation gets verified. Every deadline gets held to the letter. The phone call before the motion becomes the motion. I become, in short, an ass, and I do it with a smile and a great deal of patience.
“The power of sacrifice is in the cost to the person making it.” And, should my counterpart choose poorly, I will sacrifice a great deal to constantly remind them of that choice.
That’s not a threat. It’s simply cause and effect. I did not write the other page. I just turn to it when I am told to.
So the choice, as always, belongs to the reader. Most people choose wisely. For the few who do not, that’s why God made motions practice and 6:30 AM emails.
⚖️ Closing Arguments
The Great Greenville Leopard Hunt
This week, the Upstate faced its gravest threat since the last time someone tried to merge onto Woodruff Road at 5 p.m. On Thursday morning, a leopard got loose at the Greenville Zoo, and for a heart-stopping thirty-eight minutes, civilization hung by a thread.
Her name is Irina. She is a four-year-old Amur leopard, a critically endangered animal of which fewer than 150 remain in the entire wild. She is also, and I cannot stress this enough, a brand-new mother of twin cubs born in May. So when she slipped her exhibit at 8:42 a.m., courtesy of what officials gently described as “human error,” I have my own theory about what was really going on. This was not a jailbreak. This was a mom of newborn twins who had located the one unlocked door in the building and was going to enjoy thirty-eight minutes of peace if it killed her.
The response was, shall we say, disproportionate. Greenville police established a perimeter around the zoo and Cleveland Park. Officers arrived with guns drawn. The zoo was evacuated. Somewhere in the Upstate, a tactical situation was unfolding against a sleep-deprived house cat with excellent spots.
The police chief later assured the public, and I am quoting an actual human being here, that “everything we did was out of an abundance of caution for the public and nobody in this park was ever in any risk of danger.” I want to sit with that for a moment. Nobody was ever in any danger. Also, we drew our firearms. Both of these things are apparently true at the same time, which is the kind of nuance I usually only get to enjoy while drafting appeals.
By 9:20 a.m., the response team had tranquilized Irina, given her a precautionary second dose for good measure, and returned her to her den, where her mate and both cubs had wisely spent the entire ordeal doing absolutely nothing. Nobody was hurt. Not a single member of the public, and, thankfully, not Irina, who is far too rare and far too tired for any other outcome.
The zoo reopened Friday, having adjusted its procedures so that the one unlocked door stays locked. The Great Greenville Leopard Hunt of 2026 is over. The perimeter has been stood down. The Upstate is safe.
And somewhere in that den, a first-time mom of twins is telling anyone who will listen that all she wanted was that second dose of tranquilizer. As a parent, I have never related to an apex predator more.
Court is in recess- see you next Friday.
