Miami lawyer whose pants caught fire during arson trial arrested on cocaine charge

Miami Herald (FL)

Feb. 16—The Miami lawyer who drew worldwide notoriety after his pants caught on fire during an arson trial has been arrested on a cocaine charge.

Stephen Gutierrez, 32, whose law license is currently revoked, was pulled over Monday night near Westchester and arrested on a felony cocaine charge.

According to a Miami-Dade police report, he was pulled over for driving without a working headlight. An officer saw a bulge in his pocket and believed it was a knife; it turned out to be a metal cylinder with a white powder inside. "Gutierrez spontaneously blurted out 'That's cocaine,'" according to the arrest report.

Gutierrez was jailed briefly Tuesday morning, before posting bond. He did not answer his cell phone Tuesday morning.

The arrest adds to the mounting woes for Gutierrez, who was ordered suspended for 91 days by the Florida Supreme Court in November.

In March 2017, Gutierrez was representing a Miami man accused of torching his own car for insurance money. In a story first reported by the Miami Herald, Gutierrez was arguing to jurors that the blaze might have been caused by spontaneous combustion when flames and smoke began billowing from his pants.

Gutierrez went running out of the courtroom, as bewildered jurors and spectators watched. He blamed a faulty battery in his electronic cigarette for igniting in his pocket at a coincidental time. The episode generated national and international headlines.

After an investigation, Miami-Dade prosecutors said "it seems obvious" the fire was a "a stunt or demonstration ... meant to illustrate the feasibility of his spontaneous combustion theory of defense." But they did not charge Gutierrez, saying they could not prove he acted with criminal intent.

Gutierrez pleaded guilty to Florida Bar violations, including filing a bogus insurance claim related to the arson case. His license was revoked in November. In pleading guilty, he blamed his conduct on a myriad of personal problems and attributed the stunt to a "lack of experience and complete understanding of true meaning of zealous advocacy, rather than his honest or selfish motive," according to Bar documents.

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