Add The California Post on Google Nick Reiner will not be given the death penalty if he is found guilty of murder — and has his slain parents to thank.
Prosecutors have reportedly taken the steep punishment off the table for the alleged killing in part because of the views of Rob and Michele Reiner. Both were against capital punishment.
Reiner was indicted on August 12 for the murder of his parents, with a special circumstance of lying in wait added.
His siblings, Jake and Romy Reiner, also would have had a difficult time coping with potentially playing a role in executing their brother, TMZ reports.
They have not been supportive of their brother and have not helped him defend himself. Reiner, 33, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder after an indictment against him was unsealed.
Reiner also faces special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder by means of lying in wait, as well as an allegation that he personally used a knife as a deadly weapon.
The indictment also alleges the aggravating circumstance that the crimes “involved great violence, great bodily harm, threat of great bodily harm, or other acts disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness,” and called the victims “particularly vulnerable.”
“This was a profound betrayal by someone who was loved and trusted by the very people he is accused of killing,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said.
Reiner has been fighting for money from a trust with hopes of re-hiring high profile attorney Alan Jackson, his original counsel before the hot-shot lawyer stepped down from the case.
Reiner filed a petition requesting the $1.5 million he claimed he was supposed to be paid from his trust when he turned 30 in 2023.
The petition said that Nick was supposed to receive half of the trust “outright when he turned 30” and the other half would be given to him when he turned 35.
“The main thing that to take away from today’s hearing and moving forward is that Nick Reiner is very much entitled to his own money, his own funds, and that’s what this process is about,” Jackson said outside the courthouse after a hearing last month.
The trust matter is back in court in October. Reiner is accused of killing his famous parents in the bedroom of their $20 million Brentwood mansion.
Rob, who was 78, and Michele, who was 70, were found by their 28-year-old daughter, Romy Reiner, with their throats allegedly slit in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA in the late afternoon of Dec. 14.
The LA County Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled that the manner of death was homicide.
Reiner, who was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia before the killings and has a long history of drug addiction, was arrested hours later near Exposition Park in downtown LA after reportedly leaving behind bloody evidence at a hotel in Santa Monica.
Jake Reiner, Nick’s brother, described the anger he’s been feeling since the grisly slayings in his first sit-down interview since the murders.
“It manifests into rage, into how unfair this was, how I didn’t get a say in what happened,” the late couple’s eldest child explained to KABC at the end of August.
“I didn’t get to stop it from happening. I had no choice in the matter,” the 35-year-old continued. “I just have to accept the reality of it. And to me, that is just one of the most infuriating parts of all of this.”
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