Judge Clifton Newman: A look at the man behind the gavel in the Alex Murdaugh trial

Former South Carolina attorney and now-convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s trial captured the attention of the true crime world and the nation, but another name made headlines and trended on social media almost as much, Judge Clifton Newman.

Newman won over many people who tuned into the double homicide trial of Murdaugh. But just who is the South Carolina judge and what has made him so popular that people are pondering if he could have his own television show to crocheting his likeness as a doll?

Here’s a look at the man on the bench, his rise in prominence and what he has been up to since delivering two consecutive life sentences to Murdaugh.

Who is South Carolina Judge Clifton Newman?

Now a S.C. Circuit Court judge, Newman was born in 1951 in rural Williamsburg County in South Carolina, a little more than 100 miles north of where he presided over the Murdaugh trial in Walterboro, S.C., The Post and Courier reported in a profile of the judge last year. At the age of three, his mother moved to New York to take a job as a domestic worker for a Columbia University professor’s family, leaving him in the care of his grandparents and an aunt.

During his school years, Newman attended racially segregated schools in the 1950s and 1960s. From high school, Newman earned an undergraduate degree from Cleveland State University and graduated from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. He began practicing law in Cleveland before returning to South Carolina in 1982 to start a private law practice.

Newman served as a defense attorney, a civil practitioner and a prosecutor before 2000 when the state General Assembly elected him to serve as a Circuit Court judge.

“To come from a rural community, a farming community, and to go from that scenario to playing the role of a lawyer was quite inspiring,” Newman told the American Bar Association in 2017.

Clifton Newman’s time presiding over the Murdaugh case wins over social media

As the Murdaugh trial went on Newman’s name began to pop up in social media posts with people looking for information and praising him for his conduct on the bench while presiding over the double-homicide trial.