(NEW YORK) — Nick Reiner, the son of slain director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, has retained a high-profile attorney to represent him as he faces murder charges in their killing.
Alan Jackson, who defended Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and Karen Read has been serving as the 32-year-old’s attorney. Jackson has been in contact with Nick Reiner since he was arrested Sunday and speaking to the press as the case develops.
“Every inmate has to be medically cleared before they can be transferred to court, he has not been medically cleared. It’s just a procedural issue,” Jackson told reporters on Tuesday.
Rob Reiner and Singer were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home Sunday afternoon, and their son was arrested less than a day later. The Los Angeles District Attorney charged Nick Reiner with first degree murder on Tuesday.
The arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 7.
“There are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case,” Jackson told reporters after a court hearing on Wednesday. “These need to be thoroughly but very carefully dealt with and examined and looked at and analyzed.”
“We ask that during this process, you allow the system to move forward in the way that it was designed to move forward, not with the rush to judgment, not with jumping to conclusions, but with restraint and with dignity and with the respect that this system and this process deserves and that the family deserves,” he added.
Jackson also said, “our hearts go out to the entire Reiner family.”
This case is the latest of several major cases that Jackson has taken on in his long legal career.
Jackson spent the beginning of his law career in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, where he served as assistant head deputy for the Major Crimes Division. One of his biggest prosecutions was the murder case against music producer Phil Spector.
After one mistrial, Spector was ultimately convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.
Jackson ran for LA district attorney in 2012 but lost the election. He shifted to private practice and amassed a who’s who of clients.
He represented Kevin Spacey after the actor was charged in 2019 of indecent assault and battery. Spacey pleaded not guilty and the charges were ultimately dropped after the prosecutors’ case began to fall apart under scrutiny by the defense.
“This entire case is completely compromised” by the accuser’s decision to take the Fifth [Amendment],” Jackson told the judge in the case. “He’s the sole witness than can establish the circumstances of his allegation.”
Jackson represented disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein in his Los Angeles criminal trial over sexual assault charges in 2022.
The attorney told the jury in his closing argument that the evidence was “smoke and mirrors” and accused the women who testified of being “fame and fortune seekers.”
In a separate case that didn’t involve Jackson, Weinstein had been convicted in a New York court prior to the LA case on similar charges. This was overturned on appeal — he was convicted on one count of engaging in criminal sex but acquitted on a second count in his sex crimes retrial in New York. The judge declared a mistrial on a third-degree rape count.
He was ultimately convicted in the LA trial on Dec. 19, 2022, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He has appealed that conviction — Jackson is not representing him in the appeal.
Recently, Jackson represented Karen Read, a Massachusetts woman who was charged with killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in January 2022.
A murder trial against Read led to a mistrial in 2024 after jurors could not come to a verdict. In June, Read was acquitted in a second trial on second-degree murder and leaving a scene of personal injury and death charges.
The jury found her guilty of operating under the influence of liquor. The judge immediately sentenced her to one year of probation, the standard for a first-time offense.
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