LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Rob Reiner’s disturbed son Nick Reiner smirked in court Wednesday as his high powered lawyer Alan Jackson quit and a public defender took over defending him.
Alan Jackson told a judge that he had “no choice” but to withdraw as the attorney for the 32-year-old celebrity scion.
Reiner was in Los Angeles Superior court wearing a brown jumpsuit, with a white t-shirt underneath and shackled at his wrists and ankles.
He only addressed Judge Theresa McGonigle once when asked if he agreed to a next court date of Feb. 23.
“Yeah, I agree to that,” the wayward son said.
A group of Nick Reiner’s lawyers, including Jackson, were in court with him.
But Jackson — who notably recently helped Karen Read clinch an acquittal in the murder of her cop boyfriend — announced he and his firm would be withdrawing from the case.
Here’s the latest on the death of Rob Reiner:
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- How cops tracked down Nick Reiner in frantic manhunt after parents’ Rob and Michele’s brutal murder
Jackson did not explain the reason for his withdrawal.
Kimberly Greene with the public defenders took over as Nick’s lawyer.
Before the hearing began, Nick Reiner spoke calmly with his team before they went into the judge’s private chambers for a roughly three-minute long secret meeting.
At one point Nick Reiner smirked before he began staring straight ahead while the defense team was out of the courtroom.
The hearing had initially been scheduled for Nick Reiner to enter a plea to two charges of first-degree murder. But that was postponed presumably by Jackson quitting the case.
At his first court appearance last month he was forced to wear a blue suicide vest but he’s since been taken off of suicide watch.
Rob, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, attended Conan O’Brien’s holiday party with Nick hours before the killings. Nick got into a blowout with his parents at the party possibly because he was back on drugs and refusing to return to rehab, sources told The Post last month.
Hours later, Nick — who’d been in rehab 17 times because of his fight with addiction — is accused of carrying out the murders and then fleeing. He was arrested a few hours later 15 minutes away from the home, which had a guesthouse on the property that Nick lived in.
Nick’s sister, Romy, found her dead parents when she went to check on them after a massage therapist was left waiting outside the Reiner gate with no response from inside, the New York Times reported.
The police were called to the home at least six times in 2013, 2014, 2017, and two times in 2019 for welfare, mental health and family violence, according to LAPD records.
The police were called to the home at least six times in 2013, 2014, 2017, and two times in 2019 for welfare, mental health and family violence, according to LAPD records.
The DA’s office has yet to announce whether they plan to pursue the death penalty in Nick’s case. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 signed an executive order prohibiting capital punishment. It’s unclear if that order will remain in place when he vacates office at the end of his final term in January 2027.
