Hovkial wrote:
Judge: The case before me involves a plaintiff and three codefendants. The plaintiff has applied to the court for an order permitting her to question each defendant without their codefendants or their codefendants’ legal counsel being present. Two of the codefendants, however, share the same legal counsel. The court will not order any codefendant to find new legal counsel. Therefore, the order requested by the plaintiff cannot be granted.
The conclusion of the judge’s argument is most strongly supported if which one of the following principles is assumed to hold?
(A) A court cannot issue an order that forces legal counsel to disclose information revealed by a client.
(B) Defendants have the right to have their legal counsel present when being questioned.
(C) People being questioned in legal proceedings may refuse to answer questions that are self‐incriminating.
(D) A plaintiff in a legal case should never be granted a right that is denied to a defendant.
(E) A defendant’s legal counsel has the right to question the plaintiff.
Option BWe have one plaintiff and 3 codefendants that we will call C1,C2 and C3. Each of these codefendants have a legal counsel that we will call L1, L2 and L3.
C1 and C2 have the same legal counsel so that the new list of legal counsels is L1, L1 and L2.
The argument states that the plaintiff asks to question each codefendants one by one and the only extra person who is allowed to be there is the codefendant's legal counsel. The other legal counsels are not allowed to be in the courtroom.
The judge denies the request.
Clearly in this scenario C1 and C2, who share the legal counsel L1, would not be able to bring their own legal counsel to the courtroom.
Falsification scenario: what if each codefendant is allowed to represent himself without a legal counsel? Clearly the argument breaks.
Assumption: A legal counsel must always be present when the defendant is questioned