Metro

Imette-slay lawyer sues

Even big-time defense attorneys need to pay the rent.

The lawyer for convicted killer Darryl Littlejohn has filed a $13 million libel lawsuit against the city, claiming she was slandered when news leaked that she was under an ethics probe.

Although she was exonerated, the probe delayed the money Joyce David says she was owed under a program that provides private lawyers for indigent homicide suspects.

With no government payments during her two years of work on the headline-making case, David was evicted from her longtime Brooklyn office because she couldn’t pay the rent, she claims.

Now David, who defended the nightclub bouncer Littlejohn in the 2006 murder of Imette St. Guillen, claims the city should pay for spreading “false and malicious” rumors about her.

David was eventually paid a $75 hourly rate — $46,359.14.

She is suing the city, Deputy Criminal Justice Coordinator Shari Hyman and Barbara Difiore, administrator for the city’s Assigned Counsel Plan, in Manhattan Supreme Court. She wants $45,225 for her work on the case and $13 million in damages.