I was watching Court TV tonight, and I got to wondering if there was anything that would prevent a particularly vengeful DA from prosecuting the counsel of a convicted defendant as an accessory after the fact, on the grounds that counsel was helping the defendant to evade punishment.
Now, I’m sure that any DA who tried this stunt would find themselves in a lot of hot water, but I can’t think of any specific reason why. Any legal types out there care to enlighten me? 
Well, strictly speaking, assisting someone in evading punishment isn’t actually illegal.
Now, there are illegal practices that an attorney can take to help their clients evade punishment- suborning perjury, assisting in flight, etc. And were a defense attorney to do such, I don’t think it would take a particularly vengeful D.A. to bring charges, or at least to report the defense attorney to the bar.
But, in general, there really isn’t any law against providing a defense for a person who committed a crime. Then again, most of my law experience is from watching lots of episodes of Law & Order.
JMCJ
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Assuming no law was broken in getting the conviction, I doubt a D.A. would be vengeful enough to try it. After all, the defense attorney’s job is to try to get his client off. Further, most D.A.s worked as lawyers and understand what the defense attorney is doing.
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Okay, I’m just wagging this, but isn’t that the structure of the legal code? I’m pretty sure the laws are defined such that being the defendant’s advocate is legal and non-prosecutable. It is certain unethical practices that are illegal, such as willfully and knowingly allowing the defendant to lie under oath, aiding in flight from prosecution, hiding evidence or proceeds from the crime, etc. Seems like a Duh to me.
Yes, as has been suggested above, the simple answer is that there’s no law against being a defense lawyer.
That hasn’t stopped some (rare) prosecutors from trying. I vaguely remember (vaguely=no cite) one case in which the prosecutor charged the defense lawyer on an unrelated and highly frivolous matter, and served him just as his client was about to go testify in front of the grand jury. The client was ultimately indicted and convicted, and appealed based on, among other things, ineffective assistance of counsel. His trial counsel testified that he was too preoccupied with being criminally charged himself to render effective advice during the grand jury proceeding.
IIRC, that argument failed, with the appellate court pointing out that the lawyer was not present in the room during grand jury proceedings anyway, and that applying the usual Strickland standards, there was no ineffective assistance. They did, however, excorciate the prosecutor for such a cheap trick.
The charges filed against the defense lawyer were ultimately dismissed.