inconvenience (and sometimes trauma) of testifying is exceptionally burdensome. Id. This will furthermore randomly favor the last-tried defendants who have the advantage of knowing the prosecution’s case beforehand. Id. Rule 8(b) is a compromise between “each defendant’s right to have his own guilt considered separately, and the practical benefit to the government and the court of a consolidated proceeding. The defendant’s right prevails unless there are presumptive benefits to the government from ‘joint proof of facts relevant to all the acts or transactions.’ ” United States v. Martinez, 479 F.2d 824, 827-28 (1st Cir.1973). Overlapping evidence between defendants’ offenses will weigh the balance in favor of a joint trial. United States v. Sutherland, 929 F.2d 765, 778 (1st Cir.1991) (<HOLDING>). The First Circuit has an articulated approach
holding that erroneous exclusion of evidence regarding defendants lack of criminal record was not harmless in prosecution for drug offenses in which defendant asserted entrapment holding that prior drug convictions that were four ten and eleven years old were not so remote from the charged drug offenses as to render them inadmissible holding that drug offenses and taxevasion offenses were properly joined for trial because the likely source of income for which defendant had evaded taxes was drug distribution holding that evidence in first trial concerning firearms in which defendant was acquitted of drug and rico conspiracies could be used in second trial on firearms offenses because evidence was collateral to elements of offenses in second trial holding that statute that retroactively reduced penalties for drug offenses did not violate separation of powers