Attorney who defended himself at trial found guilty of trying to put contract hit on wife
A former bankruptcy practitioner in one of the collar counties outside Chicago has been convicted after a bench trial of unsuccessfully attempting to arrange a contract hit on his then-wife.
Rejecting an argument by Robert Gold-Smith, who defended himself at trial, that a jailhouse “snitch” had faked a recording in which the attorney supposedly sought to pay to have his wife killed, Judge Daniel Rozak found him guilty Tuesday in the Will County murder-for-hire plot.
The Daily Southtown (sub. req.) and the Herald-News have stories.
Gold-Smith was behind bars at the time of the 2012 recording because he had been jailed in 2011 for allegedly violating a protective order concerning Victoria Smith, his now-former wife.
After Gold-Smith’s conviction, Rozak gave him a chance to have a public defender represent him on post-trial motions, to which the defendant agreed.
The judge also recommended that Gold-Smith do himself a favor and use a public defender for a still-pending aggravated domestic battery charge from 2010, the Tribune reports. That case concerns a reported courthouse assault on Victoria Smith, in which another lawyer intervened to protect her.
Also unresolved is a 2015 case in which Gold-Smith is accused of offering to pay the man who wore a wire and made the 2012 recording to change his testimony.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Attorney defending his own murder-for-hire case says he was framed by jailhouse ‘snitch’”
