Conspiracy

SIGNIFICANCE: The criminal charge of conspiracy is used to fight terrorism, prevent overt commissions of crimes, and bring to justice accessories and accomplices who aid and abet in the planning or commission of crimes ranging from violent crimes against persons to business crimes against consumers or stockholders.

Conspiracy is one of several inchoate crimes that involve talking about the commission of crimes that are to take place in the future. An increasing number of white-collar criminal prosecutions include charges of conspiracy. In the past, it was assumed that businesses and other organized groups were artificial constructs, without minds of their own, and therefore incapable of forming the intention necessary to commit crimes. This view has been changing, however, so that businesses, as well as individuals, are now held liable for conspiracy and fined accordingly.

Conspiracy involves two or more actors who come together or communicate with one another to plan to engage in criminal activity. These actors may be individual persons, businesses, families, gangs, or groups. They must mutually agree either to engage in criminal conduct themselves, to solicit other persons to engage in criminal conduct, or to aid other persons in planning, committing, or attempting to solicit someone to engage in criminal conduct.

Agreement among actors is essential to the charge of conspiracy. Agreements need not be written, oral, or even explicit. Agreements among actors may simply be inferred when actors meet together or are in communication, and there exists a general understanding that those involved are working toward a common purpose. The agreements may be to commit unlawful acts, such as robberies, or to do lawful acts by unlawful means, such as businesses setting lawful prices by unlawful collusion among competing store owners. Some participants in conspiracies may limit their own involvement to legal activities; however, if the end result of a conspiracy’s combined activities is illegal, then all its actors may be held accountable for conspiracy.

Prosecution of Conspiracies

Prosecutors can gain several advantages by filing conspiracy charges against defendants. First, because law-enforcement officials often learn about conspiracies while they are still being planned, they can bring charges against conspirators before their intended crimes actually take place, thereby preventing the intended crimes. Second, defendants who are only marginally involved in conspiracies can be charged and brought to trial together with those who are more actively involved. Juries tend to find defendants guilty simply because of their proven association with other defendants who are more deeply involved in crimes. This is especially true with chain conspiracies.

Chain conspiracy involves multiple participants in a single, long criminal chain. An example is a series of illegal drug deals that begins with the manufacture of a drug and extends to the dealers on the street. Conspiracy defendants are held responsible for the actions of all participants in the chain, even if they never meet or communicate with the other participants and even if some of the actors in the chain engage in entirely lawful activities. Members of a chain can also be charged with vicarious criminal liability and be punished as though they themselves have committed the end crime, if the end crime can be proven to have been reasonably foreseeable by the actors.

Hub-and-spoke conspiracies involve multiple individuals conspiring with a single central individual, or “hub,” but not with any of the other spokes. It is a more difficult form of conspiracy to prosecute, as defendants can claim that their own communications with the hub person are separate and disconnected from the hub’s communications with the other spokes and thus not part of true conspiracies.

Many popular conspiracy theories are hub-and-spoke conspiracies in which one central actor, or group of actors, plans an objective—such as controlling world oil prices or maintaining secrecy about the crash of an alien spacecraft—and use their connections with, or their control over, multiple spokes to further their objectives. Each of the spokes may or may not know the objectives of the hub and usually do not know the roles that the other spokes play in the conspiracy.

Defense Against Conspiracy Charges

To prevent prosecutorial abuses, such as law-enforcement entrapment schemes and violations of the freedoms of speech, assembly, or association, many states require that at least one of the actors involved in an alleged conspiracy commit some overt act in furtherance of the objectives of the conspiracy. For example, if antiwar activists were to meet to discuss assassinating political leaders to help bring an end to the war that they oppose, they could not be charged with conspiracy if none of them takes active steps toward implementing the assassinations. Such persons would merely be involved in free speech. However, if one of the participants in such a meeting were subsequently to purchase a sniper rifle, hire an assassin, or begin hoarding cash, charges against the entire assemblage might be possible.

Conspiracy is a continuing course of conduct. A conspiracy is considered to be abandoned if none of its actors takes overt action within a reasonable time to pursue the conspiracy’s objective. An individual actor can also abandon or renounce the actor’s role in the conspiracy, either by telling the fellow conspirators or by reporting the conspiracy to law-enforcement authorities.

Bibliography

Amenge Okoth, Juliet R. The Crime of Conspiracy in International Law. New York: Springer, 2014. Print.

Brotman, Ellen C., et al. Criminal Conspiracy: Position Paper and Proposals for Reform. Washington, DC: Natl. Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 2015. PDF file.

Cobb, Wendy N. Whitman. "Conspiracy Laws." Free Speech Center, 18 Feb 2024, firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/conspiracy-laws/. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Formisano, Ronald. The Great Lobster War. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1997. Print.

Knight, Peter, ed. Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America. New York: New York UP, 2002. Print.

McSorley, Joseph F. A Portable Guide to Federal Conspiracy Law: Tactics and Strategies for Criminal and Civil Cases. Chicago: Amer. Bar Assn., 2003. Print.

Marcus, Paul. Prosecution and Defense of Criminal Conspiracy Cases. New York: Bender, 1978. Print.

Parish, Jane, and Martin Parker, eds. The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and the Human Sciences. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2001. Print.

Podgor, Ellen S., and Jerold Israel. White Collar Crime in a Nutshell. St. Paul: West, 2004. Print.

Salinger, Lawrence M., ed. Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2013. Print.