The lawyer for the defense charged that she suspected the police of ha

Nope. Police is plural. Look at the un-underlined part at the end using a plural pronoun 'their'. You can not reject BCDE on that count. It is a test of //ism. D is the answer.

Dear sudhirmadaan,
I'm happy to respond. I'm not sure who the author of this question is, but I don't think it's of exceptionally high quality.

First of all, the first structure is "suspected" ... "of" + [gerund]. The first branch of the parallelism puts the verb in gerund form, as the object of the preposition "of," so the second branch must match this. Choices (A), (B), and (C) all have a full verb in the second branch of the parallelism, so they violate parallelism. Only (D) and (E) get the parallelism correct.

Choice (E) is a trainwreck disaster, so that leaves (D) as the only viable answer. (D) is awkward and rhetorically poor in a way that does not resemble any correct answer on the GMAT. I don't have a high opinion of this question.

The verb "suspect" does imply uncertainty, but it's redundant to use a hypothetical verb in the "that" clause that follows.
I suspect that he robbed the bank.
The fact is my hypothetical supposition, but we use the the simple past tense inside the "that" clause. Compare the following
"I suspect that he would rob a bank."
Here, my suspicion is not about the person's actions, but about the person's motives and intentions. This is a very different statement. In general, it would be redundant to use a conditional verb inside the "that" clause of the verb "suspect."

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Actually, taking another look here, I am quite convinced that D does not work! So maybe we didn't need to worry about which way your question went.

As the first posters discussed, why would the lawyer suspect the police FIRST of one thing and THEN of another? It seems clear that the police did those things in sequence, not that the suspicions came in sequence.

Additionally, many of the little differences among the choices don't really have clear justifications. I'm going to call this one a fake and suggest we throw it out. If anyone has evidence that this is really from an official GMAT product, I'd like to compare to the original and see what went wrong.

Hi dabaobao, we know the parallelism is between of having and of using, because well, both are prepositional phrases (and in fact, start with the same preposition of, which makes the parallelism even more evident).

A can get worse in terms of interpretation. used is used as a verb here. So, used is parallel to the verb suspected on the Left hand side of and. Now, notice the structure of A:

...she suspected...and then used...

This means that she used the information obtained to find evidence supporting their murder charges.

This is clearly absurd because the intent is that the police used the information obtained to find evidence supporting their murder charges.

IMO D.

To narrow down the choices, first look at 'of having'. Next, take out [illegally taped her confidential conversations with her client ]

She suspected the police 'of having'.. 'and then of using'. Of having and of using should be parallel.

Therefore, eliminate A,B,C.

Next, 'taped' is past tense. Look in D and E for past tense in regards to obtaining evidence so the two are parallel.

'they had obtained' is past tense.

Choose D.

she suspected the police of having illegally taped her
she suspected the police of using the information

of having || of using

The lawyer of defense suspected the police of two things:-
1) of having illegally taped her conversation
2) and of using the information for their use.
Option A, B and C are out.

We need 'the' before information as we are talking about a particular information. E is out

D is the answer

There are three events in the issue.
1.The police were illegally taping the conversation. This is the first event.
2. Then they used it to bolster the oncoming murder charges. This is the second event.
3. The defense lawyer alleged about the two misdemeanors of the police. This is the third event.
Whether she is still suspecting it is not germane to the issue. The police actions are indeed the two earlier cited illegal taping of the private conversation and wrongfully using dialogue to find evidence for their murder charges.

Same Q! Why is A incorrect? How do we know that the parallel is between "of having" and "of using" and not "taped" and "used"?

I think A seems better than D since it's more concise and avoids conditional "would".
GMATNinja generis daagh

The point is that logically which two actions should be parallel?

The lawyer for the defense
- "charged that she suspected the police of having illegally taped her confidential conversations with her client" - and then "used the information obtained to find evidence supporting their murder charges."

or

The lawyer for the defense charged that she
- "suspected the police of having illegally taped her confidential conversations with her client"
- and then "used the information obtained to find evidence supporting their murder charges."

or

The lawyer for the defense charged that she suspected the police
- "of having illegally taped her confidential conversations with her client"
- and then "of using the information obtained to find evidence supporting their murder charges."

When you use "used", you are putting charged/suspected parallel to used.
But that is incorrect, right? She suspected that the police illegally taped and then the police used th info to find evidence. So the parallel actions are "having taped" and "using info".
Since the sentence uses "of having", we need to use "of using" in (D).

Hi Laksya

The "had obtained" is part of the second clause of the sentence: "...and then of using the information they had obtained to find evidence that would support their murder charges".

The first action in this clause is "obtained" and the second action is "using". Therefore, the past perfect tense "had" is correctly used with the earlier action "obtained". Hope this clarifies.

Not sure if this helps, but notice that the "and" does NOT actually start a new, independent sentence in (D).

• We have a parallel list here: "The lawyer charged that she suspected the police (1) of having illegally taped {...} and (2) (then) of using the information they had obtained {...}."
• The second half of that parallel list is NOT a complete thought: "Then of using the information they had obtained to find evidence that would support their murder charges."

The timing of the events indeed justifies the use of the past perfect.

This is incorrect:

The lawyer for the defense charged that she suspected the police of having
1. illegally taped .....
2. used the information....

We use 'having used...' to show an action before another.
Having completed by project early, I decided to go for a movie.
Having taped her conversation, the police used ...

In this parallel structure, you are implying the use of 'of having taped' and 'of having used...' Where is the next action then?
We will not have 'of having' common to both 'taped' and 'used'. Also, in that case it seems that 'illegally' is common to both which doesn't make sense.

'Having taped' is one complete action and the next action then would be 'using'

i think that it is good to use "having taped and used' because these two actions happen before 'suppected'

so, why A is incorrect?

Hi ankitapugalia, "had obtained" is (what's called) past perfect tense.

This tense is typically used to establish a "chronological" sequence (time sequence) between two events that happened in the past: the event that happened earlier in the past, is expressed as past perfect.

Here, following two events that happened in the past:

(i) Police obtained information (by illegal taping)

(ii) Police used that information to support murder charges

Since (i) obviously happened before (ii), event (i) is expressed as past perfect.

You can watch our video on Past Perfect.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Past perfect tense, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

There are various ways in which we can write this:

She suspected the police of doing A and of doing B.
She suspected the police of doing A and doing B.
She suspected the police of doing A and B.


The interpretation you have given is not ideal.
...she suspected the police of having illegally taped ... and then (of having illegally) used ...

We have the word "illegally" and it logically modifies taping. It doesn't logically modify "used".
It makes sense to say that the police "illegally taped the convos" and then "used the info obtained to find evidence."
If "taped" is parallel to "used", "used" is effectively preceded by "of having illegally".

Also, "having illegally taped the convos" is the completion of the action. So "and then.." should be followed by the next complete action. So "of using" makes more sense.

Hello ali267,

We hope this finds you well.

Here, Option A is incorrect because "having" and "used" are joined by a conjunction (the phrase "and then") but are not parallel; please remember, any elements joined by conjunction must be parallel. Further, we must conclude that these are the elements that are joined, as they refer to the two actions that the lawyer "accused" the police of - "having illegally taped" and using the information. Another way to look at it is that they must be parallel because they are the two elements in the list of actions the lawyer accused the police of; remember, all elements in a list must be parallel.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team