Chains, Wheels, and the Single Conspiracy, Part 1

• NCJ Number: 79055
• Journal: FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Volume: 50 Issue: 8 Dated: (August 1981) Pages: 24-31
• Author(s): J O Campane
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 8 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The substantive law of conspiracy is reviewed, and the constitutional issues raised in both single and multiple conspiracy prosecutions are considered.

Abstract

The agreement of two or more persons to commit a crime furnishes the basis for most conspiracy liability today, and the crime is complete when the agreement is entered into, with the overt act of being a less significant element of proof. The need to understand and prove the scope of the agreement and the participants in it is the key to success in any conspiracy prosecution. An overall constitutional problem with conspiracy prosecutions is that in focusing on group behavior, the prosecution may fail to address adequately the constitutional rights of the various individual defendants. In any complicated single conspiracy prosecution, defendants may argue that they did not know all the conspirators or what the others were doing. They may claim to be responsible only for what they themselves did rather than for the whole conspiracy alleged in the indictment. They may then seek acquittal on the basis that the charge of a single conspiracy cannot at trial be broken down into charges of individual participation in parts of a conspiracy without the prosecution's violating each defendant's right to have been informed of the precise charges against him/her. Prosecutions under single conspiracy charges also run the risk of transferring prejudicial evidence from one defendant to another. Breaking a larger conspiracy down into a number of conspiracies to be tried separately or in multiple counts in one trial also presents constitutional problems. A prosecutor's attempt to try and convict a person at successive trials for participating in two conspiracies when only one overall conspiracy is proved would result in a conviction for the same offense twice, a violation of the double jeopardy protection. A total of 59 footnotes are listed.