Conspiracy - Introduction, The Agreement, Mental State, The Object Of A Conspiracy, Conspiracy And Complicity
JAMES ALEXANDER BURKE
SANFORD H. KADISH
DAN M. KAHAN
See also ACCOMPLICES; ATTEMPT; SOLICITATION.
JAMES ALEXANDER BURKE
SANFORD H. KADISH
DAN M. KAHAN
See also ACCOMPLICES; ATTEMPT; SOLICITATION.
The crime of conspiracy is traditionally defined as an agreement between two or more persons, entered into for the purpose of committing an unlawful act. At first carefully delimited in scope, conspiracy evolved through a long and tortuous history into a tool employed against dangerous group activity of any sort. The twentieth century in particular has witnessed an expansion of conspiracy law in t…
One of the fundamental purposes of the criminal law is to prevent conduct that is harmful to society. Accordingly, the law punishes conduct that threatens to produce the harm, as well as conduct that has actually produced it. However, the law does not punish all persons shown to harbor a criminal intent. Everyone occasionally thinks of committing a crime, but few actually carry the thought into ac…
The two elements of mental state required by conspiracy are the intent to agree and the intent to promote the unlawful objective of the conspiracy. The first of these elements is almost indistinguishable from the act of agreement. Agreement is in any case morally neutral; its moral character depends upon the nature of the objective of agreement. It is the intention to promote a crime that lends co…
Common law conspiracy encompassed agreements to commit an unlawful act. The key word is unlawful: it refers not only to criminal, but also to tortious acts, or even to acts that, in the opinion of a court, result in "prejudice to the general welfare or oppression of an individual of sufficient gravity to be injurious to the public interest" (Commonwealth v. Dyer, 243 Mass. 472, 138 N.E. 206 (1922)…
Conspiracy is not only a substantive crime. It also serves as a basis for holding one person liable for the crimes of others in cases where application of the usual doctrines of complicity would not render that person liable. Thus, one who enters into a conspiratorial relationship is liable for even reasonably foreseeable crime committed by every other member of the conspiracy in furtherance of it…
Perhaps the most significant advantage of a prosecutor's decision to charge several defendants with conspiracy is that he may invoke special procedural rules that apply only to conspiracy cases. The major prosecutorial advantages of conspiracy are that it enables the prosecution to join all the conspirators for trial and to use out-of-court statements of each conspirator against all the others. Jo…
Conspiracy, a crime special to common law jurisdictions and largely unknown, except in modest forms, in continental European countries, is one of the most controversial of all substantive crimes. It affords great advantages to law enforcement, since it avoids multiple trials, permits prosecution of preparatory activity at an early stage, facilitates prosecution against organized criminality, and e…
American Law Institute. Model Penal Code: Proposed Official Draft. Philadelphia: ALI, 1962. ??. Model Penal Code: Tentative Draft No. 10. Philadelphia: ALI, 1960. Developments in the Law. "Criminal Conspiracy." Harvard Law Review 72 (1959): 920?1008. Note. "Conspiracy: Statutory Reform since the Model Penal Code." Columbia Law Review 75 (1975): 1122?1188. U.S. National Commission on Reform of Fede…
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