Fired by court after murder trial no-show, lawyer is back on the job again
Summarily fired by the presiding judge after he failed to appear for a double murder trial last week because of a conflicting murder trial in another court, a Louisiana lawyer is back on the job again.
After a Friday hearing at which attorney Martin Regan explained the conflict to the Orleans Parish judge, he was reinstated as defense counsel for Yolanda Davis and Roy Joyner, who both face second-degree murder charges, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
Regan had previously filed a motion to postpone the trial, but did not appear in court on the trial date because he was in court trying a murder case in another jurisdiction. (It ended with an acquittal Thursday.)
Although the judge said from the bench Friday that Regan had not actually been fired earlier in the week because the court did not have the power to terminate him, minutes from the proceeding show that the judge did order a clerk to strike Regan as counsel and appoint the public defender’s office to represent Davis and Joyner, the newspaper reports.
