Tamara Curtis, a member of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s defense counsel, is under investigation by the Florida state bar association, a spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast on Thursday night.
News of the inquiry comes a day after Cruz was formally sentenced to life in prison, following an emotional two-day hearing during which the parents of his victims lambasted his attorneys for their conduct over the course of the trial.
The Florida bar’s probe was first reported by Miami-based station WPLG. In a statement to The Daily Beast, bar association spokesperson Jennifer Krell Davis confirmed that the investigation was ongoing but did not elaborate.
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Curtis, an assistant public defender, was not present in court on Wednesday. She went unnamed by the relatives who gave testimony. But several of them referenced a moment during a pretrial hearing recess weeks ago when she appeared to flash an obscene gesture at the court, rubbing her middle finger on her cheek as she sat next to a smirking Cruz.
The bar investigation’s subject and scope were unclear as of Thursday night, as was the exact date the inquiry was launched. A call to the office of Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s chief public defender, was not immediately returned.
What prompted Curtis’ gesture is unknown, but Fred Guttenberg, the father of 14-year-old victim Jaime Guttenberg, said last month that the attorney had been “frustrated” by how Judge Elizabeth Scherer was responding to her courtroom arguments. “That moment was disgusting, immature, and reprehensible,” he tweeted. “It was also a reminder to me that this defense team long ago lost any humanity for the victims of this crime.”
In footage of the incident, Curtis appears to catch sight of a courtroom camera, making an inaudible comment to a woman sitting next to her. The woman seems to suggest the gesture, herself flashing a brief middle finger while looking at Curtis. The assistant public defender then moves her hands to her cheek.
“I will never, ever, ever forgive that moment,” Guttenberg told reporters after Cruz’s Oct. 13 verdict, in which a jury split 9-3 in favor of the death penalty, failing to reach the state’s unanimity requirement.
Other parents echoed his words in Wednesday’s hearing. Annika Dworet, who attended every day of the trial alongside her husband after their 17-year-old son, Nicholas Dworet, was killed by Cruz, reprimanded the defense for “holding, touching, and giggling with this cold-blooded murderer.” She called the behavior “disgusting and unprofessional.”
“This man, this animal, this piece of shit, this bastard took the lives of 17 people,” said Michael Schulman, the father of Scott Beigel, a slain Parkland teacher. “You have a right to defend him. You have no right, no right to demean the people who lost somebody. None.”
The middle-finger incident was also referenced during a heated exchange between Judge Scherer and the defense on Tuesday. The confrontation was sparked after Cruz’s attorneys complained the Parkland families were targeting them in their statements, with McNeill arguing, “I did my job, and every member of this team did our job, and we should not be personally attacked for that.”
The back and forth between the defense and the judge, with the prosecution chiming in at times, escalated until Scherer exploded on behalf of the victims’ families. “When these people are upset about specific things that have gone on from that table,” she snapped, “like shooting the middle finger up at this court, and laughing, and joking—Mrs. McNeill, be quiet—when these people have sat in this courtroom and watched this behavior from that table and they want to say that they’re not happy about it, what is the problem?”
