I found this sentence on CNN. Does this sentence look ok to

Question

I found this sentence on CNN. Does this sentence look ok to you?

Junnier and Smith had been charged in the indictment with felony murder, violation of oath by a public officer, criminal solicitation, burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and making false statements.

querio · Answer

This sentence has severe problems with parallelism! In addition, on the Gmat you'll expect to see a comma before the last item of a list (e.g. "...had been charged with X, Y, and Z")
The use of "had been charged" should be analyzed within the context of the text, do you have the whole text?

ggarr · Answer

That is the entire para.
But here is the link to the article jic:
https://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/26/atlan ... index.html

I dunno if you noticed but there is an "and" before the last item in the list.
Also, what's wrong with the parallelism?

querio · Answer

Parallelism: тАЬтАжcharged with A,B,C,D,E, and FтАЭ
A: felony murder
B: violation of oath by a public officer
C: criminal solicitaction
D: burglary
E: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
F: making false statements

If you have a look at the above items, you will find discrepancies in the parallel structures among the items in the list. For instance, item F (verb+adj+noun) is not parallel with D (noun). Do you see the difference? As a rule, ALL items in a given list MUST be grammatically parallel. In addition, before the last item of the list you should have the following structure тАЬ, andтАЭ. The list of items in the text has got the word тАЬandтАЭ but fails to include the comma, the sentence should read тАЬ..deadly weapon, and making false statementsтАЭ

Regarding the verb tense, within the context of the text the use of тАЬhad been chargedтАЭ is correct. The author uses this verb tense to show that this action happened before (тАЬ..earlier ThursdayтАЭ) the other actions he is describing.

pakkakhiladi · Answer

Junnier and Smith, who is on administrative leave, had been charged in an indictment unsealed earlier Thursday with felony murder, violation of oath by a public officer, criminal solicitation, burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and making false statements.

Shouldn't it be : 
Junnier and Smith  , who ARE on administrative leave, HAVE been charged in an indictment unsealed earlier ........

ggarr · Answer

Parallelism: â€œâ€¦charged with A,B,C,D,E, and Fâ€

querio · Answer

The article was changed to read:
 
This is ok in my book, however, the original sentence was flawed. I think the simple past tense (were) would've been suffice. Do you agree?

Sure, it should be simple past (were).

Here is the orig: 
And I think they're referring to Smith who is on admin leave. So that might be ok. Also, how would you reconcile the lack of parallelism? 

I agree, the 'who' is referring to Smith. The reconstruction of the lack of parallelism is a bit more complicated, you have to find new words/phrases for many of the items displayed in the list. The idea is that you MUST ensure that ALL items listed are grammatically parallel. 
E.g. "... verb, verb, and verb"; "... adj+noun, adj+noun, and adj+noun", etc...

I found this sentence on CNN. Does this sentence look ok to

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