The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 10: We’ll All Go Down Together
Conspiracy pg 25: It Doesn’t Take Much
In our case, a lot of us can be charged with Conspiracy. Each of us in this chart agreed and intended that the Maguffin get stolen.
Organizational chart with the Big Cheese at the top, Heist Guy below him, Ledway and Synthcore and Flavors and Bahr below him, Dan below Ledway, and Chase below Synthcore.
It doesn’t matter that Ledway, Flavors, and Bahr never knew Synthcore, or that Chase even existed. It doesn’t matter whether their role was big or tiny. It doesn’t matter whether they joined the conspiracy at the outset or later on.
All that matters is the actus reus of agreeing to get that crime committed, with whatever mens rea that object crime would have required.
So:
If the Big Cheese had instead given the narrator information about the MacGuffin, and offered to finance any attempt to get it, while knowing that the easiest way to get it would be robbing the bank (thus knocking his mens rea down to “knowledge” rather than “intent”), he wouldn’t have been guilty of anything if the statute for bank robbery requires intent?
Doubtful. If Bob points a gun in someone’s direction and fires, knowing the most likely result is going to be their death, he’s still charged with murder. If the Big Cheese knows all that, then he knows that by hiring the narrator to “obtain” the MacGuffin, he’d be causing a robbery to take place. If he’s acting with a knowledge of what the results will be, he has an intent to produce those results.
Except that isn’t what intent means. By your logic, there’s no difference between knowledge and intent, but they were two separate steps on the mens rea-o-meter we saw earlier.
Now, whether can you prove that you didn’t have intent is another matter; I don’t know how easily you could convince a jury that Bob only meant to wound whoever, but considering that “shooting to wound” is a thing as far as “common knowledge” goes, it might not be as hard as you think. (In which case Bob would go down for manslaughter rather than murder)
Ledway Flavors and Bahr sounds like a great name for a law firm.
How can Dan be brought in for conspiracy? He wasn’t one of the people who agreed to commit the theft, he’s an accessory after the fact.
As I understand it, he’s an accessory after the fact with regard to the crime itself, but as for conspiracy to commit the crime, it’s just a question of whether he was in agreement to help with the crime at any point, regardless of whether or not he ended up doing anything. If he’d gotten a call saying “Hey, running from the cops. Might need to switch cars.” and agreed, then his friend never showed up, he’d still be a conspirator, just not an accessory/accomplice (depending on jurisdiction).