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After weeks of delays, Nick Reiner was set to be arraigned for the murders of his parents on Wednesday.
It didn’t happen, however, due to the fact that Reiner’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, withdrew from the case unexpectedly.
Nick is due back in court on February 23, and his trial won’t get underway until much later.
But we have new information about the strategy his defense team might pursue once they finally begin making their case.
For starters, Jackson has been replaced by a public defender named Kimberly Greene.
And even though she has 19 years of experience, Greene will probably be replaced ahead of Nick’s trial.
Wealthy murder suspects don’t usually go to court with public defenders as their lawyers, and the Reiner case is turning out to be less open-and-shut than previously thought.
Nick ‘went into a spiral’ after change in psych meds, insiders claim
TMZ has produced a documentary about the Reiner murders that’s set to premiere on Fox on Friday night.
The film features new information about Nick’s battle with mental illness, as well as new insights about the strategies his defense team might employ.
We now know that Reiner was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, and in the months before his parents were killed, his doctors switched up his meds.
The change turned out to be disastrous, sources tell TMZ, and Nick’s condition deteriorated rapidly.
Sources claim the new medication caused Nick to suffer “a complete break from reality.”
Insiders say Nick’s doctors further failed him by not placing him on a psychiatric hold while they tried to figure out the combinattion of meds that would stabilize him.
The insanity defense is notoriously difficult to argue, but the fact that Nick was a victim of medical malpractice might mean that he has a case.
TMZ notes that California is different from many other states, in that “a defendant does not have to show he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong to use the insanity defense, only that he didn’t understand the nature and quality of his act.”
Again, all of this is just speculation, but the fact that Jackson conclusively stated that Nick is not guilty of murder in his remarks to the media on Wednesday could also be taken as an indication that Reiner intends to use the insanity defense.
TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened airs Friday night on Fox.
