A new judge has been assigned to the Murdaugh retrial, and within hours it became one more story about the appearance of a problem rather than the substance of the case. Taken alone, it is minor. Taken together with everything else, it raises a harder question: why does South Carolina's justice system keep handing its critics something to write about in the one case where it can least afford to?

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson says the death penalty is on the table in the Murdaugh retrial. As someone who has prosecuted two federal death penalty cases, I have a specific view on whether the state can actually win one — and what it would take to get there.

The SC Supreme Court's Murdaugh ruling is being read as a jury tampering case. It's also something else — a direct critique of the prosecution's trial strategy that breaks from normal appellate practice and raises a question most commentators have missed: is it fair to criticize prosecutors for presenting evidence the trial judge expressly approved?