[JURIST] A federal judge in Manhattan ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that the US government violated the constitutional rights of 16 former employees of KPMG [corporate website] by pressuring the professional services firm to stop paying the employees' defense costs in an ongoing criminal tax shelters case [JURIST report]. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan [official profile] found that the tactic violated the defendants' rights to a fair trial and the effective assistance of counsel under the Fifth and Sixth amendments [text], and he criticized prosecutors for trying to gain an "unfair advantage" in the case. He wrote:

Justice is not done when the government uses the threat of indictment – a matter of life and death to many companies and therefore a matter that threatens the jobs and security of blameless employees – to coerce companies into depriving their present and even former employees of the means of defending themselves against criminal charges in a court of law. If those whom the government suspects are culpable in fact are guilty, they should pay the price. But the determination of guilt or innocence must be made fairly – not in a proceeding in which the government has obtained an unfair advantage long before the trial even has begun.