Another defense attorney has resigned as counsel in the securities fraud trial of con-artist Andy Esquivel.  In a filing with Judge Connors on Thursday, prosecutor Nathan Lyon confirmed to the court that William Albright has resigned from the case citing a “recently developed conflict of interest.”  No details on the nature of the ‘conflict of interest’ were made available to the court, but a pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for February 12th at 8:45am before judge Connors to assign a new public defender.  At that time the court will also review a continuance motion filed by the prosecution due to scheduling conflicts of it’s two expert witnesses in the case.

[Continuance filing and defense resignation]

This makes the second attorney to resign from Andy Esquivel’s defense team in less than nine months.  Defense attorney Michael Holje of the firm Brown & Bradshaw resigned the case in May citing similar client issues and demanded that Andy Esquivel cease all communication with his office.  Andy subsequently asked to represent himself before pleading ’indigent’ before the judge and requesting that a public defender be appointed to defend him.

What is Andy doing to keep scaring away his defense attorneys?  We’re pretty sure Allen Brady simply ran out of money to continue subsidizing Holje for Andy, but for a court appointed public defender to quit the case, Andy must have done something really, REALLY stupid!  We may not know what caused the conflict until the hearing on February 12th, but until then it’ll be fun to speculate on what drove Albright away.  My guess is that it was a combination of Andy violating attorney-client privilege by sharing private communications between himself and his attorney with he world, Albright taking exception to Andy’s threats to file erroneous complaints with the Utah Bar against the prosecutor in the case, and Andy’s clearly being not only guilty but non-repentant about the crimes of which he is accused.  Under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame any ethical attorney for being unwilling to continue as Andy’s defense counsel.

Andy remains free on a $10,000 bond secured by his mother because he doesn’t have a job.  Case updates can as always be found here.