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The younger son of Hollywood filmmaker and political activist Rob Reiner has made his first court appearance for the two murder charges he faces in the stabbing deaths of his parents, who were found slain in their Los Angeles home over the weekend.
The arraignment was delayed until 7 January and Nick Reiner, 32, did not enter a plea.
He spoke only to say “yes, your honour” to agree to the date.
Sporting a beard and clad in a blue protective vest, the defendant appeared in court just three days following his arrest. This appearance comes a day after being formally charged in one of the city’s most shocking celebrity murder cases.
He is accused of fatally stabbing his parents, actor-director Reiner, 78, and photographer-producer Michele Reiner, 70, in the early morning hours of Sunday in the affluent west LA neighbourhood of Brentwood, then fleeing the scene.
The couple’s bodies were discovered on Sunday afternoon.
Nick Reiner, who has publicly acknowledged a years-long struggle with drug addiction, was arrested that night in a downtown Los Angeles park near the University of Southern California campus.
Officials reported that his arrest was conducted peacefully, leading to his booking on murder charges at a downtown detention center, where he currently remains incarcerated without the option of bail.
After the hearing on Wednesday, Nick Reiner’s lawyer Alan Jackson called the case “a devastating tragedy that has befallen the Reiner family”.
He said the proceedings will be very complex.
“And we ask that during this process you allow the system to move forward in the way that it was designed to move forward,” Jackson said outside the courthouse.
“Not with a rush to judgment, not with jumping to conclusions.”
Jackson declined to answer shouted questions from dozens of reporters surrounding him.
Should Reiner be found guilty of the charges against him, he faces a potential life sentence without parole, or even the death penalty.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman said prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek the death sentence.
California has had a moratorium on carrying out the death sentence since 2019.
According to prosecutors, a knife was used in the Reiner killings but few other details were given about the circumstances of the slayings.
Authorities have made no mention of a possible motive or whether drug use was a factor.
Autopsies, once completed, will determine the precise cause, manner and times of death, officials said.
Nick Reiner, the younger of the couple’s two sons and their middle child, has spoken of being in and out of drug rehab facilities since he was 15 and periods of homelessness that occurred when he refused to seek treatment for his addictions.
Those experiences inspired the movie Being Charlie, co-written by Reiner and his father.
Rob Reiner was best remembered for his prolific Hollywood career as a filmmaker, directing such popular movies as This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Stand by Me, A Few Good Men, Misery and The American President.
He met his wife, Michele, while he was directing When Harry Met Sally and they married in 1989.
