Ex-Mass. Probation Chief O'Brien Acquitted Of Corruption

Former Massachusetts Probation Commissioner John O'Brien has been found not guilty in a state corruption trial.

O'Brien was accused of conspiring to get his employees to attend a fundraiser benefiting former state Treasurer Timothy Cahill in order to land O'Brien's wife a job at the lottery commission Cahill oversaw.

Jurors returned their verdict after getting the case Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court.

Prosecutors said the 2005 event was part of a pattern of fundraisers O'Brien organized to benefit politicians in exchange for jobs.

O'Brien's lawyer said the connection between Laurie O'Brien's hiring and the fundraiser was "a figment of prosecutorial imagination" and no one involved in her hiring knew her husband was probation commissioner.

O'Brien resigned in 2010 after an independent counsel found he oversaw a rigged hiring system in which the politically connected got probation department jobs.