Alex Murdaugh’s defense team is "cautiously optimistic" that the disgraced former South Carolina attorney could win a new trial when the state Supreme Court hears arguments in February, his lawyer Dick Harpootlian said.

Harpootlian, who represents Murdaugh alongside attorney Jim Griffin, said the court will consider two consolidated appeals when it hears oral arguments Feb. 11, one challenging a legal ruling made during the 2023 murder trial and another on Court Clerk Rebecca "Becky" Hill’s alleged jury tampering.

"There’s two basic appeals that have been consolidated," Harpootlian said in an interview with Fox News Digital. "One is the underlying trial – the legal technical issues that you see in every appeal. And there’s an additional appeal that’s very unusual: did the clerk of court say things or do things in an effort to have the jury vote guilty?"

The second appeal centers on Hill, who was accused of making comments to jurors during the trial that defense attorneys say were intended to influence a guilty verdict. 

Harpootlian’s comments come as he promotes his new book, "Dig Me a Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Who Seduced the South," a true-crime account of one of South Carolina’s most infamous serial killers, Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins. The book chronicles Harpootlian’s firsthand experience prosecuting Gaskins, who was executed in 1991 after confessing to at least 13 murders. He disposed of his victims' bodies in the swamplands of coastal South Carolina.

While the cases differ dramatically, Harpootlian said decades inside South Carolina courtrooms have given him a perspective on how the justice system operates.

In the book, Harpootlian describes Gaskins as a far more complex figure than the "two-dimensional" monster portrayed in court.

"The court and the jury saw a two-dimensional Pee Wee Gaskins, which was horrifying enough," Harpootlian said. "But he three-dimensionally was much more complicated."

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Gaskins, a self-described killer who bragged about his crimes, cultivated a reputation in his hometown of Sumter as a friendly, helpful man.

"He appeared to be affable, gregarious," Harpootlian said. "Everybody that knew him thought he was just a wonderful, friendly guy."

"What people think they know from documentaries or TV is often very different from what actually happens in the courtroom," he said.

Harpootlian said he recently spoke with Gaskins’ daughter, Shirley, who turned her father in and testified against him at his first death penalty trial.

"She told me he had to be stopped," Harpootlian said. "But she thinks about it every day. That was her father."

In "Dig Me a Grave," Harpootlian also grapples with the toll of working capital cases, including an episode shortly before Gaskins’ execution when the killer attempted to have Harpootlian’s young daughter, who was 4 years old at the time, kidnapped in a failed escape plot.

Despite his discomfort with the death penalty, Harpootlian said he did not attend Gaskins’ 1991 execution.

"What would I get out of that other than watching another human being die?" he said. "I regret every death, and I’m certainly not going to relish in it."