So cooperating witnesses are everything
to conspiracy cases. When the
government’s bringing a conspiracy case,
they are specifically targeting
individuals. Even if it’s before the
criminal charges in the form of
subpoenas, target letters, knocking on
doors, coming to places of work, phone
calls to try to identify the individuals
that they believe are the most
vulnerable and have the most to lose and
are the most likely to want to turn and
cooperate then against the other
individuals in the conspiracy. because
there is nothing better in the
government’s mind than uh a cooperating
witness who will say yes I am a
conspirator I entered into a criminal
partnership with this under other
individual and then that individual
cooperates and it goes and goes and goes
until the government has a full picture
of the conspiracy conspiracy is not the
easiest thing to prove when nobody
within the conspiracy cooperates very
rarely if ever will you have a
conspiracy prosecution that does not
involve at least one cooperator. Now
whether that person was charged or not
um is uh another thing but someone who
has fear and criminal exposure and who
the government has bullied into
providing information that’s really how
they build a conspiracy case. So
cooperators are everything and you have
to know how to deal with them. There are
absolutely ways to deal with cooperators
and to minimize the harm that a
cooperator can do to your client.