A pre-trial hearing has been held for a social media model who fatally stabbed her boyfriend in the spring. The young woman, recently extradited to Florida from Hawaii, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she murdered her partner, and now content from her adult entertainment life that is part of the prosecution evidence will be available to the media.
On Tuesday, Sept. 6, Courtney Clenney and her team attended an evidentiary hearing months before her murder trial for the stabbing death of her former partner, Christian Toby Obumseli, at condo complex in Miami on Sunday, April 3, CBS News reports. The hearing was held in a Miami-Dade County Court.
Clenney, who also goes by Courtney Tailor, is charged with second-degree murder with a deadly weapon but says she only stabbed the Nigerian-American, days before his 28th birthday, out of self-defense.
The hearing was set for the court to review the evidence presented by either party to be considered for the trial. The prosecutors presented their evidence against Clenney, including a timeline of what happened before and after his stabbing, crime scene photos, the murder weapon, and sexually explicit videos and photographs. They also wanted to introduce an elevator video showing an abusive Clenney beating Obumseli a couple of months before his killing.
The 26-year-old’s defense attorney, Frank Prieto vehemently disagrees with the inclusion of the video and has asked the judge to not permit it, saying it bears no relevance to the case.
Prieto also wants to limit the amount of evidence made public, saying the prosecutor is creating a publicity hazard to the case. He argues that releasing evidence to the public is biasing a potential jury pool.
Like the video, he argues that much of the evidence in the State Attorney’s Office, including thousands of photos, audio, content pulled from Clenney’s social media profiles, and 12,000 text messages between her and Obumseli, are irrelevant to the case, only serving to paint a particular picture of his client and hinder her chance to have a fair trial.
The lawyer said, “To vigorously defend my client, I’m not going to stand back and let her be a punching bag for the media.”
“This case needs to be tried in this courtroom with the protections of a fair and impartial trial,” he added.
The New York Post reports the lawyer also said, “There’s a hunger for this case in the media and what we’re trying to do is make sure this case is tried in a court of law.”
Prieto also described some of the evidence was “salacious” and “sexually explicit.”
“This is going to turn into a circus of media outlets publishing salacious materials, which have nothing to do with guilt or innocence in this case,” he said, describing photos and video pulled from Clenney’s phone as “sexually explicit” and “pornography.”
Despite his petition, Judge Diana Vizcaino denied his request to restrict the release of evidence, siding with both the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and the Miami Herald newspaper, which opposed the motion in court Tuesday.
A handcuffed Clenney attended the hearing. Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and blue surgical mask. Observers report the former Instagram model with over 2 million followers was visibly upset the judge did not rule in her favor.
Clenney and Obumseli had been dating for two years, with friends, family members, and neighbors offering the romance was marred with violence. Police records also show a series of domestic violence complaints connected to the couple. A video pulled from their luxury apartment high rise elevator surveillance camera shows Clenney punching her larger male partner in his arm, back, head, and other places as he tries to de-escalate the situation and protect himself.
The prosecutor believes she has enough evidence to prove Clenney, as an abusive partner, killed her boyfriend in an act of domestic violence.
Her lawyer said his team said they are optimistic about the upcoming trial, stating they have evidence to prove that Clenney was indeed fighting for her life on that Sunday evening.
