An attorney for the parents of a Miami social media model accused of fatally stabbing her boyfriend in 2022 denounced their arrest and said it was an attempt to "bully" them.
Kim Dewayne Clenney, 60, and Deborah Lyn Clenney, 57, were arrested last week in Texas on felony charges of unauthorized access to a computer or electronic device.
The couple, who are the parents of Courtney Clenney, arrived in South Florida to face the charges on Tuesday and were booked into the Miami-Dade jail and later released on bond.
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
The parents appeared but didn't speak at a news conference Wednesday with their attorney, Jude Faccidomo, who called their arrest "incredibly troubling."
Authorities said the parents illegally accessed a laptop that they claim belonged to Courtney Clenney's boyfriend, Christian Obumseli, after the 27-year-old Obumseli was stabbed to death in the couple's Edgewater condo in April 2022.
COURTNEY CLENNEY LATEST
Courtney Clenney is facing a murder charge in the killing, and was also charged last week with unauthorized access of the computer.
But Faccidomo said the computer was a shared device between Courtney Clenney and Obumseli, and that the parents were authorized to access it.
He added that after Obumseli's death, law enforcement swept the apartment and left the laptop behind.
"The arrest warrant in this case is incredibly troubling and frankly never should have never been issued. There is not a crime here," Faccidomo said. "It’s presented in a way to suggest this was some sort of hack of this computer. This was easily accessed by a four-digit code that Courtney knew.”
According to an arrest warrant, authorities learned of the computer after a search warrant gave investigators access to messages that included a group chat between Courtney Clenney's attorneys and her parents.
Included in the messages were discussions about accessing the laptop using guessed passwords, the warrant said.
Faccidomo said it's not unusual to someone have multiple passcodes for multiple devices and said anyone, including someone like Clenney who'd been in jail for over a year at the time the laptop was being accessed, would have forgotten the passcode.
"The reason this was charged is because they are witnesses on their daughter's behalf, and this is an attempt to neutralize them and bully them," Faccidomo said.
Faccidomo said accessing the laptop was part of the defense of Clenney. and added that it's useless in the case anyway.
"Anything we can use is what defense lawyers do. We investigate and we defend," Faccidomo said.
Attorneys for Courtney Clenney were also at Wednesday's news conference and said they're concerned about the manner in which the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office accessed their communications.
"What is troubling is the steps that the state attorney’s office took in reviewing privileged communication," attorney Sabrina Puglisi said.
The attorneys said they could seek sanctions or possibly the recusal of the State Attorney's Office in the case.
NBC6 reached out to the State Attorney's Office for a response to the allegations on Wednesday and a spokesperson directed a reporter to the arrest warrant which they said "clearly outlines the information and facts on which these charges are based."
Courtney Clenney, who went by the name Courtney Tailor on social media, including on OnlyFans, had more than 2 million Instagram followers at the time of Obumseli's death.
Miami-Dade prosecutors said the couple had an "extremely tempestuous and combative relationship" and that Obumseli was the victim of domestic violence, while Courtney Clenney's attorneys have said she was the victim of an abusive relationship and that she stabbed him in self-defense.
Clenney, now 27, remains behind bars while she awaits trial.
