Prosecutors dropped a computer hacking case against OnlyFans model and murder suspect Courtney Clenney and her parents after a judge found the state improperly gathered evidence against them. NBC6’s Tony Pipitone reports.
A Miami social media model and her parents who were accused of illegally accessing her slain boyfriend's laptop after she allegedly fatally stabbed him are no longer facing charges in the computer case.
Courtney Clenney and her parents, Kim and Deborah Clenney, were in a Miami-Dade courtroom Thursday where prosecutors announced they would no longer be pursuing felony charges of unauthorized access to a computer or electronic device against all three.
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Authorities said the parents and Clenney had illegally accessed a laptop that they claim belonged to Clenney's boyfriend, Christian Obumseli, after the 27-year-old Obumseli was stabbed to death in the couple's Edgewater condo in April 2022.
Courtney Clenney still faces a second-degree murder charge in Obumseli's death.
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COURTNEY CLENNEY CASE
Defense attorneys for the parents said the computer was a shared device between Clenney and Obumseli, and that the parents were authorized to access it.
In June, Judge Laura Cruz ruled to exclude a key piece of evidence in the laptop case, concluding that the Miami-Dade prosecutors violated attorney-client privilege by accessing private family conversations with their attorneys regarding the laptop.
Judge Cruz faulted the state for seeing the case “through prosecutorial blinders” that led them to believe the Clenneys and the attorneys were engaged in “criminal activity” when they discussed by email and text how to access a laptop computer that Clenney’s father recovered from the couple's condominium after police had returned its custody to the family.
Instead, she found, what they were seeing was the “normal investigation of a criminal case,” which is protected by attorney-client privilege.
That privilege can be pierced if the communications reveal the attorneys and clients were engaged in crime or fraud.
The state took it “entirely upon themselves to unilaterally conclude the (crime-fraud) exception applied,” the judge found, when they should have gone to the court for a determination of that.
The exclusion of the messages does not necessarily impact the homicide case, according to defense attorneys.
But Courtney Clenney’s attorneys in the murder case said after court Thursday that they expect the state to now ask the governor to assign another prosecutor’s office to handle that case, as Miami-Dade prosecutors, they said, were “tainted” by the communications they read improperly.
Frank Prieto, one of the attorneys representing Courtney Clenney in the murder trial, said he's hoping the state attorney's office will recuse themselves but are preparing a motion if they don't.
"That's really disheartening that the state would take these tactics and invade the defense camp as the judge found. They invaded the attorney-client privilege, work product, they read our texts, our strategy about this case," Prieto said Thursday. "They can't and they should not remain on this case."
Kim Clenney also spoke after court Thursday, calling the arrest of him and his wife earlier this year "insanity."
"Finally truth has prevailed. Also, I'd like to say, that this has been an ordeal for Deborah and myself for five months, especially for the last two years with Courtney being held unjustly for a crime that she did not commit but it's an ordeal that we would gladly go through again 100 times over if it would provide justice for Courtney," Kim Clenney said. "But I think the main thing today is it has shown the bias and extreme misconduct of the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office in Courtney's prosecution and the targeting of my wife and I unjustly."
The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office released a statement Thursday after the laptop charges were dropped.
"Judge Laura Cruz found that prosecutors were unaware that attorney Frank Prieto represented Kim and Deborah Clenney since a retainer agreement hiring him was only produced after their arrest. Additionally, attorney Prieto never publicly indicated that he represented Kim and Deborah Clenney, only their daughter," the statement read. "A reading of the group texts by police investigators appeared to indicate the commission of a crime. This information, supplied to prosecutors, resulted in the criminal charge. Since Judge Cruz's ruling that the information contained in all the text messages were covered by attorney-client privilege excluding them from use in the criminal case, the charge against each was nolle prossed."
Courtney Clenney, who went by the name Courtney Tailor on social media, including on OnlyFans, had more than 2 million Instagram followers at the time of Obumseli's death.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the couple had an "extremely tempestuous and combative relationship" and that Obumseli was the victim of domestic violence, while Courtney Clenney's attorneys have said she was the victim of an abusive relationship and that she stabbed him in self-defense.
"What's really heartbreaking is that Ms. Rundle claims to be an advocate for female victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence yet she's chosen to target our daughter, who was very much a victim of abuse and was only defending herself that night, she was forced to defend herself," Deborah Clenney said Thursday
Clenney, now 28, remains behind bars while she awaits trial in the killing of Obumseli.
This is a developing story. Refresh for updates.
