Legal Question in Criminal Law in California
In a highly publicized trial, a lawyer was added to the defense team of a man accused of a horrendous double murder. It was said that this lawyer did not contribute anything to the defense of the accused but was placed on his team for only one reason. He had knowledge of the crime which would sink the defendant and that the defense team put him on their team to insure that he couldn't be subpoenaed by the prosecution.
Is this legal? And more importanly, how ethical is this?
1 Answer from Attorneys
I do not believe that the prosecution would be prohibited from calling the attorney as a material witness (e.g eyewitness) merely because he was hired by the defendant. There may be additional hoops the prosecution may have to jump through to get him on the stand, but they could still probably get him to testify. It may make it less likely the prosecution would call him, but it would probably not be an absolute bar. If the attorney, in that capacity, came upon the knowledge through his conversations with the defendant (and then the defendant later hired another attorney), the defendant could still invoke his attorney-client privilege even if the initial was not eventually hired.
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