Convicted pimp fires lawyers ahead of appeal

Joseph Hazley — the recently convicted pimp who, the feds say, was responsible for the murder of a 16-year-old girl in 2016 — has fired his defense lawyers less than a week after they asked to no longer represent him, a new court filing shows.

Hazley’s two attorneys said in a Friday filing that Hazley terminated them ahead of an appeal that he plans to file.

The attorneys said that Hazley wrote a letter on Tuesday notifying the court that he planned to appeal his 32-year prison sentence “due to ineffective assistance of counsel.”

Hazley’s firing of the lawyers — Raymond Wigell and Huma Rashid — came less than a week after the two filed a motion to withdraw as counsel.

Without offering specifics, Wigell and Rashid said there are “professional reasons that are privileged between Hazley and Wigell and Rashid that prevent Wigell and Rashid from continuing to represent Hazley, who intends to appeal this matter to the Seventh Circuit [Court of Appeals].”

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman has yet to rule on the motion to withdraw.

A copy of Hazley’s letter was not publicly available Friday, and Wigell and Rashid did not respond to a request for comment.

A jury found Hazley, 35, guilty of six counts of sex trafficking following a weeklong trial earlier this year.

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Prosecutors said Hazley was the pimp who marketed 16-year-old Desiree Robinson for sex on the now-shuttered Backpage.com. Robinson was murdered by a john in a garage in south suburban Markham on Christmas Eve 2016 as Hazley slept in a car nearby, authorities allege.

During his sentencing hearing, Hazley — who has four children — maintained his innocence, claimed that testimony presented against him at trial was false and asked for leniency.

“Judge, I never had any type of control over what happened to Desiree,” he said.

The man charged with murder in Robinson’s death, Antonio Rosales, remains held without bail at the Cook County Jail. His next court hearing is scheduled for next week in Markham.

Charles McFee, who essentially sold Robinson to Hazley, was sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to a single count of sex trafficking.