John Jefferson
Courtney Clenney (left) shown in an exhibit played in court (Law&Crime Network), (right) Clenney and Christian Obumseli in an Instagram photo together.
Miami prosecutors have dropped a felony computer crime case they brought against an OnlyFans model charged with murdering her boyfriend, a case that also entangled the suspect’s parents for the last several months.
Courtney Clenney, now 28, continues to face a second-degree murder case in the 2022 stabbing death of 27-year-old Christian Tobechukwu “Toby” Obumseli, but neither she nor her parents Kim and Deborah Clenney, 60 and 57 years old respectively, will have to worry any longer about charges for alleged unauthorized access of Obumseli’s laptop, a device the defense maintained was a “shared computer” that was “useless” in the stabbing case.
According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, Judge Laura Cruz’s ruling to suppress text message evidence that prosecutors cited to support the allegations effectively made dropping the case the only option.
The judge identified an attorney-client privilege issue that made using the evidence against the defendants impossible, since an attorney involved in a group chat represented all three of the Clenneys, a memo explained.
“Briefly, the court found that the State did not know and did not intentionally breach attorney client privilege when the text message was read because the State did not know that Frank Prieto represented Defendants Kim and Deborah Clenney. However, a retainer agreement was produced after their arrest showing that Frank Prieto did represent the Defendants as clients in addition to representing their daughter, Courtney Clenney,” prosecutors said. “Therefore, based on the Defendants being legally represented, the court found that the statements made in all the text messages were covered by attorney client privilege, and as such, were privileged and excluded from use by the State in the prosecution.”
Prosecutors added that they didn’t agree with “all” of the judge’s ruling, but they “respect” and “accept it,” and are now laser-focused on the murder case against Courtney Clenney. The defendant has claimed that she stabbed Obumseli in self defense amid an abusive relationship.
Left: Kim Clenney; Right: Deborah Clenney in booking photos from January 2024. (Travis County Jail)
Miami-Dade court records reviewed by Law&Crime show the computer crime cases against each of the Clenneys are as of Thursday closed as a consequence of the state’s nolle prosequi.
As Law&Crime reported at the start of the computer crime case in January, warrants for Clenney and her parents claimed there was no attorney-client privilege issue with using thousands of group chat texts that allegedly included discussion with attorneys Frank Prieto and Sabrina Puglisi about passwords and “laptop PIN ideas” to access the device.
In September 2022, Clenney’s father, in the group chat, requested “any PIN/passwords we can try before you see her tomorrow,” the warrants claimed.
Late that month, Kim Clenney allegedly succeeded and said: “Hell yeah! That PIN worked!”
“Kim,” Prieto allegedly responded, “Hold off on going through the computer please. I don’t want to turn you into a witness just yet if you find something useful. But that is great news and makes this easy.”
The warrants claimed that Puglisi had a similar response.
“[W]e don’t want you accessing files because the State Attorneys could request their own independent analysis of the hard drive and accuse you of creating or modified files,” documents said. That’s why I wanted to put a quick pause on that. Obviously I know you would not do that but we want to maintain that credibility.”
“I had barely opened it and was starting to poke around, but we started a video call so I stopped,” Kim Clenney allegedly responded. “Never opened a file, so I didn’t see anything.”
In October 2022, Courtney Clenney’s Texas-based mother Deborah drove from Austin to Dallas to give the laptop to Prieto, the warrants claimed.
All along, however, attorneys for Clenney’s parents regarded the ensuing charges as a “trumped up” abuse and “power play by prosecutors” to “discredit them in the press and make their lives miserable.”
In a statement to Law&Crime, Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office spokesperson Ed Griffith indicated that there was something of a misunderstanding about the status of attorney Prieto’s representation of Courtney, Kim, and Deborah Clenney.
“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. 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,” the statement said. “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.”
Law&Crime reached out separately to Prieto’s office for comment.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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