Insights & News

When separate and often unrelated parties to any sort of court action – especially if it involves criminal allegations – act in concert as they build their defense, they have to be very careful not to either run afoul of collusion or obstruction of justice rules or waive the attorney-client privilege. But there is a perfectly legitimate – and lawful – way for co-defendants in a civil or criminal action to work together without finding themselves in even more trouble than they might be at the moment. Typically called a common interest agreement or a joint defense agreement, it allows […]

The First Circuit dealt another blow to prosecutors’ aggressive pursuit of public officials in “official act” type prosecutions. This time, RICO and mail fraud statutes were at issue in US v. Tavares. Holding that gratuity statutes should be treated more as a “scalpel” than a “meat hook,” the court held that the Government went too far in its theory of criminal liability against officials at the Massachusetts Office of the Commissioner of Probation. The officials were charged with engaging in a hiring scheme where a legislator’s favored employment candidate would be hired by the OCP in exchange for those legislators’ […]