A Spokane County judge removed two criminal defense lawyers from Cynthia L. Khaleel’s murder case Monday, saying their conduct had turned the prosecution into one of the most shocking efforts to frustrate the justice system she had seen. Jacquelyn High-Edward also pushed the trial back 30 days after Khaleel’s defense team failed to appear as scheduled when jury selection was set to begin.
The lawyers, Stephanie Cady and Lindsey Wheat, work for Spokane County’s Counsel for Defense. High-Edward said their removal was necessary even though it would further delay the case, which has already been postponed more than 10 times. The judge wrote that Cady and Wheat showed a flagrant disrespect for their client, the court, the community and their profession.
Khaleel, 39, was charged in 2024 with first-degree aggravated murder in the death of her ex-boyfriend, 40-year-old Justin Daniel. Prosecutors say she stabbed him 48 times and shot him three times after arriving at his home on April 13, 2024, in violation of a no-contact order. When deputies reached the house, they found Daniel dead. First responders later described kitchen knives scattered at the top of the stairs, blood smears on the walls and multiple broken windows.
The case sits at the intersection of a bitter custody fight and a homicide charge carrying the possibility of life in prison without possibility of parole. Court documents obtained by KXLY show Khaleel had recently lost a custody battle over the former couple’s 3-year-old daughter, and Daniel had been granted full custody a month earlier. Prosecutors said Khaleel and Daniel were engaged in a legal dispute over the child when he called police to report that she had come to his home in violation of the no-contact order.
High-Edward’s order lays bare a court that had run out of patience with the defense strategy. Over the past four weeks, the judge wrote, counsel filed four motions to continue and two motions to withdraw, and both withdrawal requests came on the morning trial was set to start. When the court denied them, Wheat left on paid leave with no notice to Khaleel. Cady had gone on leave March 29, when trial was then set for May 4, and Wheat later sought more time before also going on leave before the May 18 trial date.
The judge said Khaleel, who was stunned and confused by the sequence of events, felt she had no choice but to seek new counsel because she had no idea what was happening. High-Edward also found that Cady and Wheat had been evasive, obstructionist, litigious and contemptuous since March 27, 2026, and that their delay requests had no basis in fact or law. Prosecutors had said they were ready to proceed on April 23.
Monday’s breakdown came after years of legal churn in a case already marked by delay and a defendant with a history that has shadowed the courtroom. Khaleel was previously acquitted in 2018 of second-degree murder in the death of her 5-year-old adoptive nephew, Gary Blanton III, after prosecutors had claimed she fractured his skull in 2015. In the present case, the judge’s order says the court granted the request for new counsel because the attorneys’ own conduct made that step unavoidable. The result is another reset in a case that now awaits a new defense team, a new hearing on the show-cause issue at 1:30 p.m. PST Tuesday and a trial date pushed back once again.
