The Broward County Public Defender’s Office filed a notice on Wednesday requesting they be pulled from the case on the grounds that Nikolas Cruz, 20, will soon inherit enough money to afford his own private attorney.
The public defenders for Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school massacre suspect, have asked to be pulled from the case, citing the 20-year-old’s inheritance as the basis for him to find private counsel.
By law, public defenders are assigned to defendants who are too financially unstable to afford their own representation. Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein and Gordon Weekes, his chief assistant, revealed that they decided to file the request on Wednesday after learning of the amount Cruz would be inheriting earlier this week, according to AP. Last year, they had reason to believe that the suspect would only be inheriting $30,000, an amount too low for private counsel. “By statute, we can only represent the poor and indigent,” Weekes told the publication.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer, who will be overseeing the proceedings, will likely set a hearing on the public defenders’ withdrawal motion at a later date. It is unclear whether they will be required to continue defending Cruz until then.
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