Defense attorneys Blake Rubin and Angela Cavanaugh were found not guilty of witness intimidation after being accused of arranging for a key witness in a human trafficking case to be bailed out and made difficult to locate. Rubin represented Fabian Beltran who was charged with human trafficking. Cavanaugh was representing the witness who was held on bail on her own case. Beltran made arrangements for the witness, who struggled with drug addiction, to be bailed out and offered drugs and a place to stay where she would not be found. This was designed for her not be available to testify against him at trial.
Investigators figured out that Beltran was behind the witness getting bailed out and disappearing. When he was confronted, he blamed Rubin and Cavanaugh for orchestrating this. The prosecutors chose not to see this as an improbable accusation by a desperate man facing additional charges and instead gleefully ran with it. They gave Beltran, who actually violated the witness intimidation statute, full immunity so that they could use him to prosecute Rubin and Cavanaugh with his self-serving accusations.
Prosecutors could not have actually believed that this prosecution would result in convictions, but they prosecuted Rubin and Cavanaugh anyway. It is no secret that the process of being prosecuted is punishment in itself, and this prosecution appears to have been designed to intimidate defense attorneys from doing their best work. Prosecutors may have specifically targeted Rubin because he recently ran against incumbent Joseph Early for Worcester DA. The Worcester County DA’s Office are responsible for giving serious consideration to Beltran’s ridiculous assertions. They were aided and abetted by the Plymouth County DA’s Office who took on the prosecution to preserve the appearance of impartiality since Worcester defense attorneys were implicated. Shame on both Joseph Early (Worcester County DA) and Timothy Cruz (Plymouth County DA) for their collaboration in this attack on the defense bar. Rubin and Cavanaugh should never have been prosecuted.