The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 10: We’ll All Go Down Together
Conspiracy pg 20: Accomplice Liability
Chase and Dan, likewise, are also accomplices to the crime, even though neither was part of the original scheme.
Bob Chase vignette
Chase helped the Doctor plan the heist. He did so intentionally. So he’s just as guilty of the theft as the rest of us.
Dan vignette
And Dan helped Ledway and Bahr escape. He helped after the crime was over, so in some places he’d be charged with the separate crime of “Accessory After the Fact,” but the logic is the same either way.
But not everyone who helps a crime take place is an accomplice.
Is Chase necessarily an accomplice?
If the doctor had told him nothing of the crime, is he still an accomplice by virtue that his information was highly likely to be used for a crime?
What if the doctor lied and said he needed Chase for a third-party anonymous security inspection? Would it be enough to prove that he believed him to avoid guilt, or is the act suspicious enough in itself that there’s no reasonable defense for why he would do it?
A few years too late, but I assume that this would be interpreted subjectively by the jury, if Chase was just a street thug and Dr. Synthcore told him he was a third party security inspector, Chase should have known something was up. But if Chase worked as an independent contractor of some sort, was looking for a job, and Synthcore had a legit looking contract (looked like it was issued by the bank) to scope out the bank and right a report, maybe he could get off, or at least get a reduced charge.