Shanesha Taylor, the Arizona mom battling charges for allegedly leaving her children in a hot car while she was interviewing for a job, will now be represented by a public defender, AZFamily reports.
According to the news site, Taylor's other two attorneys were allowed to withdraw from the case after both lawyers said that there had been a breakdown in communication and trust between them and the defendant, AZFamily notes.
Benjamin Taylor, who is not related to the defendant, said that he had an ethical conflict with the Phoenix mom; and John Agra, who had been representing Shanesha Taylor for only a few days, said that he had not not paid.
Taylor is still facing felony child abuse charges after failing to meet the deadlines that prosecutors gave her to put money into a trust fund for her children, the news site notes. Taylor had two separate deadlines for putting money into the fund and avoiding charges, but she missed both. According to the news site, she said she didn't put the money in because her children would not have been able to access the money if they did not attend college.
Reports tell a more unflattering story about Taylor and her attitude since her March arrest for leaving her two young sons in the car. According to KTAR, a minister who was helping out Taylor said that the mom was wasting opportunities presented to her, "squander[ing] … goodwill."
"I got a lot of calls and made a lot of calls to people that are at the helm of hotels and restaurant chains and other businesses locally here … so she could find full-time employment," the Rev. Jarrett Maupin told KTAR, "only to have her not show up for the interviews."
Other supporters, as well as her attorney, received job offers on her behalf, but Taylor reportedly turned her back on each one because, Maupin said, the mother said it wasn't the kind of work she wanted to do—even though most of the offers were in hospitality, the field she preferred, and offered good wages.
"This is someone that was looking for anything right, at least according to the statement she made to the media and to the public and to the people supporting her, but there were umpteen opportunities for her to become fully employed," Maupin added in his blistering commentary.
Maupin believes that Taylor's supposed inability to pay legal fees goes to show that she spent all of the money—more than $100,000—that Internet supporters donated. "You can't have what she claims to have, $72,000 left of the money, and be declared indigent," he said. "That is just impossible … that money is gone.
"I think the public's charity spicket has been closed tight, and for good reason," he said. "People are sometimes cynical about our country, but truly the nation opened up its heart to Shanesha in a way I've never seen them do before for people in similar circumstances, and she squandered that goodwill."
Taylor has a trial set for Dec. 10.