Judge denies request to curb public statements in OnlyFans model’s Miami murder case
The judge overseeing OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney’s murder case shot down the state’s attempt to curtail public comment by defense attorneys until after an online celebrity website airs a story on the high-profile case next week.
In a brief order issued Wednesday night, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Laura Shearon Cruz denied a request from Miami-Dade state prosecutors to block statements from Clenney’s attorneys until the documentary on the show airs Feb. 12.
State prosecutors were incensed that Clenney’s family and attorneys had co-operated with the celebrity website TMZ and that defense attorney Frank Prieto appeared on Court TV late last year and spoke about how Christian “Toby” Obumseli had been sexually assaulted by his father as a child.
Prosecutors argued it had nothing to do with Clenney’s murder trial. The social media star, who at one point boasted more than two million followers, is charged in the April 2022 stabbing death of Obumseli, in their Miami bayside condominium.
State prosecutors and Clenney’s defense attorneys wouldn’t comment on the judge’s latest ruling Wednesday.
Clenney has been jailed since August 2022 for the stabbing death of Obumseli — her boyfriend and a crypto-currency trader — four months earlier. She was taken into custody in Hawaii and extradited to Miami.
The spat between defense attorneys and state prosecutors in a case that has garnered worldwide attention, reached a fever pitch last week. That’s when prosecutors came just short of requesting a gag order in the case, instead asking Judge Cruz to find some sort of remedy to limit what the Clenney family and their attorneys can say in public.
Defense attorneys Sabrina Puglisi and Prieto argued the state opened a genie bottle when they began admitting volumes of information into discovery shortly after the murder, which became available to the public.
