The former Florida lawyer who is known as the lawyer who’s pants caught on fire during a trial several years ago, has been arrested for cocaine possession.
32-year-old Stephen Gutierrez was taken into custody on Monday night after he was pulled over for driving with a broken headlight.
According to the report, the Miami-Dade police officer noticed a large bulge in Gutierrez’s pocket and inquired about it believing it could be a knife.
Gutierrez then allowed the officer to retrieve the item which turned out to be a cylinder container holding a bag of white powder.
During the inspection of the powder Gutierrez reportedly told the officer “That’s cocaine.”
The powder was tested and confirmed to be cocaine.
Gutierrez was arrested for possession and taken to an area jail. He has since bonded out on Tuesday.
He last made headlines in 2017 while representing a client who was accused of setting his own car on fire in order to receive insurance money. Gutierrez contended that it was possible that his client had nothing to do with the fire and that the car may have spontaneously combusted. During the trial, Gutierrez pants caught on fire and sent him running out of the courtroom. Moment’s later Gutierrez reentered the courtroom and blamed the incident on the battery from his e-cigarette.
Prosecutors believed the whole incident was a stunt “to illustrate the feasibility of his spontaneous combustion theory of defense,” but could not prove it.
Gutierrez was not charged for the stunt, however, he later plead guilty to Florida Bar violations after filing a fake insurance claim related to the case.