Lawyer to Be Tried in Hit Case : Justice: Prosecutors allege that Stuart Sandrock wanted to have client killed. Judge calls the case ‘bizarre.’

A La Jolla attorney charged with attempting to contract with a jail inmate to kill a former client was ordered Thursday to stand trial.

Prosecutors allege that attorney Stuart Jeffrey Sandrock, 38, was involved in a fee dispute with Robert Aaron Noe, 34, who Sandrock also thought was developing a sexual affair with his wife.

“This is not a usual case at all,” Municipal Judge Terry Knoepp said as he denied Sandrock’s plea to lower his $250,000 bail.

“It’s simply bizarre.”

San Diego police detectives received a tip from a jailhouse informant in early November that Sandrock was attempting to arrange a hit on Noe. The informant was housed with Noe at County Jail in the Vista,

Transcripts of recorded phone conversations between the unnamed informant and Sandrock indicate that the jail inmate was to fulfill the contract after Noe signed papers that would turn money over to the attorney.

Court records show that just before the alleged arrangement was made, Noe received a $25,000 settlement in a brutality lawsuit that he had filed against the Sheriff’s Department. Prosecutors maintain that Sandrock wanted his former client killed after he received control of the funds.

“I’m gonna draft a contract . . . and then I’m gonna take it up there to him to sign,” Sandrock said during the taped conversations. “The guy’s (expletive) me bad, so all I want him to do is sign this sucker. I’m gonna take the check down and cash it, then do our thing.”

The key exchange during the Nov. 5 conversation comes when the informant asks Sandrock what instructions he should give to the man who has allegedly been contracted to do the hit.

“He wants to know if I want to get him . . . just knocked cold out or if I just want him just took all the way out. . . . I got to figure out, you know, what extreme,” the informant says.

“I want, you know me . . . I go all the way,” Sandrock replies.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Anear said Wednesday that Noe occasionally called the Sandrock house in an attempt to contact his attorney.

In addition to solicitation for murder, Sandrock is charged with possessing a machine gun, an assault rifle, a concealed and loaded weapon, and cocaine.

Sandrock was arrested Nov. 13 in a parking garage near his office on La Jolla Village Drive when an undercover police officer allegedly delivered a fully automatic AK-47. Investigators say Sandrock arranged the delivery through the same jailhouse informant.

Defense attorney Steven Feldman said in court Thursday that Sandrock had arranged his own mini-sting operation and was merely planning to turn the AK-47 and several other illegal machine guns over to authorities.

Anear said the tests indicate that Sandrock was under the influence of cocaine at the time of his arrest. Additionally, police serving a search warrant at his home recovered just over three-quarters of a gram of cocaine and all the paraphernalia associated with its use.

Knoepp ordered Sandrock to appear in Superior Court on Jan. 4 for arraignment and trial setting.