The singer D4vd has dropped his high-powered legal team and will now be represented by the Los Angeles County public defender’s office on charges that he repeatedly sexually assaulted a teenage fan before killing her and dismembering her corpse to cover up the sex abuse.
David Anthony Burke, 21, asked to have the public defender’s office replace his defense team of Blair Berk and Marilyn Bednarski ahead of a Monday morning hearing, Berk said in court. She did not say why he sought the switch, but Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo granted his request.
Burke split from attorneys Bednarski and Berk — who have represented a number of high-profile clients including Harvey Weinstein and L.A. labor union leader David Huerta — following a decision to rush into a preliminary hearing earlier this year, just months after Burke was arrested and charged with Hernandez’s murder.
Monday’s court appearance was a post-preliminary hearing in which Burke pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
It can sometimes take years for a murder trial to reach a preliminary hearing, the first milestone in a case where prosecutors must present enough evidence to convince a judge the case can proceed to trial.
Burke’s team demanded an immediate preliminary hearing. In July, prosecutors put forth a week’s worth of problematic evidence against Burke, including years of text messages that laid out Burke and Hernandez’s illegal sexual relationship in explicit detail, receipts showing online orders for a number of tools that could be used for body disposal, and forensic analyses that showed evidence of blood in his garage.
Prosecutors have long suspected Burke used a chainsaw to sever Hernandez’s limbs in his garage last April and tried to collect the blood in a kiddie pool. He also allegedly amputated two of his victim’s fingers to hide evidence of a pair of matching tattoos they received.
The text messages also showed Burke impregnated the teenage girl and convinced her to get an abortion. The night before police believe Hernandez was killed, the evidence showed, she and Burke got into an argument. She told Burke she would “end ur career and ur life I will damage anything,” according to texts demonstrated in court.
At the time, Burke was signed to a multi-million-dollar recording deal with Interscope Records and his debut album was set to release that week. Prosecutors said that was ample motive for Burke to kill Hernandez and protect his ascendant music career.
Although they faced an uphill battle, Bednarski and Berk did highlight some issues with the prosecution’s case during the preliminary hearing. Los Angeles police investigators never recovered any of the tools Burke allegedly used to dismember Hernandez, and there are no witnesses who actually saw the murder. On cross examination, the defense team got a medical examiner to admit they could not absolutely rule out that Hernandez was holding the weapon or attempted to harm herself the night of the killing.
Blair and Bednarski did not immediately comment on the reason for their removal from the case. It was not clear how Burke could retain the services of the public defender’s office, given his financial success during his brief music career.
The switch marks the second time this year the public defender has subbed in for a high-powered attorney in an L.A. celebrity murder trial. Earlier this year, former L.A. County prosecutor Alan Jackson dropped out as Nick Reiner’s attorney on charges he murdered his parents, beloved Hollywood icons Rob and Michele Reiner.
No one has explained the switch, but court records show Nick Reiner has struggled to access his family trust fund, suggesting he ran out of money to pay Jackson, one of the city’s most visible defense attorneys.
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