The Appellate Division held that the Rules of Professional Conduct support a rule where individual, personal conflicts of county prosecutors are not imputed to the entire office in a published appeal Wednesday.

In the underlying case, State v. Smith, Daishon I. Smith moved to disqualify the entire Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office from prosecuting him and multiple co-defendants. In February 2020, a task force from the MCPO began an investigation into gang-related activities in Monmouth and several other New Jersey counties, according to the opinion.