Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Judge Tosses Key Evidence in OnlyFans Model Computer Crimes Case

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

The judge presiding over a computer crimes case in which Courtney Clenney and her parents, Kim Clenney and Deborah Clenney, are charged has suppressed key evidence in the case. The Clenneys were accused of hacking into the laptop of Christian Obumseli, Courtney's boyfriend who's she's accused of killing. Courtney claims she acted in self-defense. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy breaks down the judge's ruling with the attorney for the Clenneys, Frank Prieto, in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I'm granting the defense's motion in part as a motion, I'm treating it as a motion to exclude. A judge throws out evidence in a computer crimes case filed against OnlyFans model Courtney Klenny and her parents. Kenny's lawyer is here to talk about what it means for that case and the case in which Clenny is accused of killing her boyfriend, Christian Abomselli. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Earlier this year, Courtney Clenny and her parents, Kim Clenny and Deborah Clenny, were charged with unauthorized

access or excessive access to a computer, computer system, or electronic device. A warrant claimed that Clenney and her parents essentially hacked into Christian Abomsele's laptop and that Courtney Clenney's lawyers were a part of the effort. Clenney faces a second-degree murder charge for the April 2022 stabbing death of her boyfriend, Christian Abomsele. She claims it was self-defense. Many of their interactions were caught on camera. No, you're telling me I touched her breast yesterday when I You did I didn't say you You are leaning. Yo, you're dumb Actually, don't be actually I'm done. Okay. Can you send him home? Yeah, I should

Done done You're costing me money No You're costing me money. I didn't do anything since I got to this house because of you. You let Milan say some lies. No, because you were flirting with three girls the whole time. What three girls? What three girls? You? What?

It doesn't even matter. You and Milan. Milan? I was flirting with Milan? She said, hey, come get your mans. You're lying. You're lying. No, I'm not. You're lying. She said, come get your mans that I was trying to hit on Milan. But back to that computer crimes charge. That warrant from January cited text messages between attorneys Frank Prieto and Sabrina Puglisi and the Clennies from 2022,

in which they discussed trying to guess the password to the laptop. Investigators and prosecutors said that showed evidence of a crime, but Klenny and her parents said it wasn't. Klenny's parents were taken into custody at their home in Texas earlier this year. Law enforcement body-worn cameras recorded that arrest. There are warrants for you and your wife's arrest. What? I know. I have to cancel the ashlap. It's supposed to be here in 30 minutes. Oh, yeah. Okay, Debra. Nobody's going to hurt you. I understand. I have to cancel the ash. I'm supposed to be here in 30 minutes. Oh, yeah. You're okay, Debra.

Nobody's going to hurt you. No, I'm not okay. I know. Nobody's going to hurt you. I understand. I mean, you're physically okay. It's all a deal. We certainly understand.

The Clunies and their lawyers maintained they did nothing wrong because they said they had the right to investigate the case. They asked to throw out the charge and exclude the use of the text messages between the Clennies and attorney Frank Prieto since they were privileged communications. Clenny and her parents were in court this week when the judge issued part of her ruling. I'm granting the defense's motion in part as a motion. I'm treating it as a motion to exclude. And I'm granting and I'm granting it.

So you guys can read through this, and I'm going to, and you'll see that in Mr. Clerk. So those text messages are not allowed to be used as evidence. The judge went further in writing. The defendant's motion to suppress and or exclude is granted. The court finds that Courtney Kim and Deborah Clunney have all been represented by Frank Prieto and Sabrina Puglusi since August slash September of 2022. The communication sought to be excluded by the parties is protected by attorney-client privilege and or work product privilege. This privilege was violated, albeit perhaps unknowingly, when the communication was read by prosecutors in this case. The court finds that the crime fraud exception for privileged communication under Florida statute does not apply to this case because the state of Florida has made no prima facie showing that defendants knew their communications could be an alleged crime. The proper remedy for this breach of privilege is exclusion of the communication from use in this case as evidence.

So without the text messages, there really may be no case here. Frank Prieto is Courtney Klenny's lead defense attorney. Frank, your reaction to the judge's ruling saying that her attorney-client privilege was violated? Anjanette, first, thanks for having me here today. Yeah, I mean, it was long overdue. The judge clearly, you know, she took evidence, she took testimony. And I think that her order speaks volumes that she saw that the conduct on behalf of the state attorney's office was wrong. They invaded the defense camp and attorney client privilege, and that was clear to the court. So what's the next step now? Because can these charges even stand without that text message evidence? Obviously, the state attorney and the law enforcement officers felt that you all had

done something wrong. The judge feels differently. She said this was a privileged communication. So what happens next? Well, and the judge, to be a little more specific, just to follow up, the judge also found that there was no crime fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege, basically saying, listen, the attorneys did nothing wrong. And actually, the Florida Bar rules and ethics and advisory opinions support that. We have a right to investigate our case. And we did that with a laptop and it was completely legal so now it puts the state in a very precarious position where they don't have these text messages that they were using to support the charges in that case of

the computer unlawful access to the computer so quite honestly um i believe they have no other choice and if they're going to do the right thing, they need to drop these charges around what we call a nulla prosecuting in that case. Is there some type of time frame in which that decision has to be made? There is no time frame. But again, if the state attorney looks at this and looks at the conduct of her assistant state attorneys, the lack of evidence that they have in that case. And by the way, nothing was done illegal. They should drop it as soon as possible. What has this been like to go through this

with your client? Because you've been representing her on this second degree murder charge. You contend that she acted in self-defense. It's a hotly contested case. The state attorney says this was a second-degree murder and that she's guilty of a crime. That's their contention. The Abomsele family feels the same.

But then you had this added on to it where you had this other additional charge to deal with. As a defense attorney, what's it been like to deal with that? Well, you know, from the defense attorney perspective, you know, it's what we do. We will attack the case and we'll vigorously defend Courtney. But what it's done, the detrimental effect of these bogus charges is that it's delayed Courtney's second degree murder case by months, if not almost a year, while these issues are litigated in a sideshow, quite honestly, of what these computer fraud access charges were. So it's delayed her

case. She's in custody. We're coming up on two years in August. It's really it's a shame that we can't get to the pursuit of the truth here quicker, but we will have her day in court and we'll show that Courtney was a victim here and acted in self-defense. Does it have a chilling effect, though, on a defense attorney when a judge issues a ruling such as this, that you all were basically doing your job, that you had a right to investigate the case? It doesn't seem that she's found that any crime occurred. This is the judge's ruling and that you're just trying to do what you do as defense attorneys, whether someone likes it or not. Does that have a chilling effect on you as a defense attorney or other defense attorneys watching this unfold?

Well, and Jeanette, absolutely. If you recall, or some of your viewers may recall, the search warrant that was issued's office to basically put into written pleadings that the attorneys were somehow participants in some type of conspiracy where they were actually at the end of the day. Now that the judge sees the light, there was no crime committed. There is no crime that was committed by the Clenney family or the defense lawyers. And the, and the judge's order speaks volumes to that that that we have a right to investigate our case if the police leave evidence behind i have an absolute duty to investigate that look through it and the obligation would be to turn it over if there is evidence and at the end of the day guess what there's nothing on this laptop that's useful for the state or the

defense when is the trial now going to take place? I mean, it was going to take place, I thought, this year. That's what the goal was for sometime later this summer. So when do you see this taking place? Well, unfortunately, you know, I think the earliest would be the end of the year. It may go into the first quarter of next year simply because now that we have this judge's ruling, this is going to have a spillover effect into the second degree murder charge case because it's clear that the state attorneys reviewed confidential attorney-client privileged communications where we were discussing our defense strategy for the murder case. So they were privy to our interpretations of our experts that we've hired, and they've invaded the defense camp. So clearly what's

coming down the pike here is a motion to recuse the entire state attorney's office in Miami-Dade because they cannot be fair and impartial. They have now got a glimpse into the defense's strategy. That can't stand. I was going to ask you about that, if you were going to ask them to recuse themselves. Because if the judge is saying that you didn't violate attorney-client privilege, and yet there were these text messages that they went through, and that's what law enforcement does. They download a cell phone and they go through this stuff and they look through it. I mean, it's like, should a special master have been appointed to go through this and

look at what was privileged and what wasn't? And that does happen sometimes in these cases. Right. And that's exactly, that's a great point. Had the state attorney's office acted properly ethically as soon as they saw there were communications between attorneys they should have stopped they should have brought it before the court for in-camera proceedings for the court to make a determination whether it's protected material but this prosecutor wanted to be the judge and the jury and the prosecutor all in one. And he just decided unilaterally, oh, well,

Mr. Prieto can't represent the family. So I'm just going to read through everything. It's comical. So were you technically representing all of them at that point in time? And then it becomes, you know, when they are charged with a crime, you can't represent them. So they get other counsel, the parents, I mean. Yeah, that's correct. So part of the evidentiary portion of the hearing on whether or not the state attorneys invaded the attorney-client privilege, we introduced the retainer agreement that I had with the Klenny family, not just Courtney, with the entire Klenny family,

dating back to September and actually April of 2022. So we provided that to the court. She reviewed it. And yeah, so I was their family attorney advising them on multiple factors related to the cases. But when it came down to the fact that the state basically accused myself and my co-counsel, Ms. Puglisi, of being co-conspirators in that case and witnesses in that case, we brought in outside counsel, which is the proper and ethical thing to do. So what's the next step now, other than working toward a trial date, a motion to recuse, you're saying will be filed, that you'll be filing that to recuse the

state attorney's office what's what happens after that uh so if if the court and you know we believe the court should grant a motion to recuse the state attorney's office um so if that does happen the governor needs to appoint a separate state attorney's office from another circuit and they'll take over the case which is obviously going to delay things even longer but there's still uh quite a lot of motions that will need to be litigated uh we have motions to suppress we're going to be presenting um we have experts lined up that we've already disclosed to the state uh there's uh potential other experts that we're looking to hire. There's still a lot of meat on the bone, so to speak, of what the defense has

to accomplish before we're trial ready. So we're probably looking into early next year. Frank, the body camera footage that came out in Discovery that showed Courtney in the immediate aftermath of this stabbing as first responders arrived. Do you have anything to say about that, about what it showed with how Courtney was responding and reacting? Yeah. And, and Jeanette, that's not, that's not new to me. I think it's new to the media that they've put that out there, but yeah, I've reviewed it all and it's quite telling in her reaction. She's clearly in distress. She's in excited state. She's clearly in panic mode. She was just holding her boyfriend in her arms as he was bleeding. And one thing that I find very telling is her statement to the police is her concern for her

boyfriend and followed up with her early statements about what had happened, that she threw the knife, that he was attacking her. So her statement immediately upon the first responders showing up is completely consistent with what she told the investigators at the homicide bureau when she was interviewed. Her story has never changed. It's been consistent because the fact of the matter is she was defending herself that night. Frank Prieto, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I reached out to a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office at the time of this recording. I had not yet heard back. A status conference on that computer crimes case will be held in August. At that time, the prosecution will have to say how they will move forward.

They may have to dismiss the charge. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.