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Why can representing multiple defendants in a criminal case be ethically difficult?
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Legal ethics
Illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for Charles Dickens's Bleak House. Here Lady Dedlock is visited by her cunning old lawyer, who discovers her deepest secret and threatens to reveal it to her husband.
Representing multiple defendants in a criminal case presents significant ethical challenges primarily due to conflicts of interest. Under legal ethics, an attorney is prohibited from representing multiple clients if their interests are inconsistent or if the defense of one client requires the attorney to forgo advancing the interests of another.1
The ethical difficulty arises in several specific scenarios:
- Inconsistent Defenses: An attorney cannot effectively represent two defendants if their respective defense strategies contradict one another.1
- Disparate Evidence: Conflicts may emerge even when the case against one defendant is significantly stronger than the case against the other, potentially forcing the attorney to prioritize one client's interests over the other's.1
- Duty of Loyalty: An attorney must provide full and faithful representation to every client. If the attorney must act against one client to further the interests of another, they violate their fundamental ethical obligations.1
While clients may sometimes provide consent after full disclosure of these risks, such consent may be insufficient if the public interest is deemed to be adversely affected.1