Conspiracy | Definition, Examples & Cases | Britannica (original) (raw)

conspiracy, in common law, an agreement between two or more persons to commit an unlawful act or to accomplish a lawful end by unlawful means. Conspiracy is perhaps the most amorphous area in Anglo-American criminal law. Its terms are vaguer and more elastic than any conception of conspiracy to be found in the continental European codes or their imitators. In most civil-law countries, the punishment of agreements to commit offenses, irrespective of whether the criminal purpose was attempted or executed, is largely confined to political offenses against the state. In the United States, state statutory law has been greatly influenced by the Model Penal Code (1962), provided by the American Law Institute, an independent organization composed of leading lawyers, judges, and law professors whose purpose is to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law. The U.S. Congress, however, has not adopted the Model Penal Code as federal law. Thus, in many states, statutory law limits the conspiracy offense to that of furthering criminal objectives.

Generally, there is no particular form that the agreement must take to constitute conspiracy. Although many statutes now require an overt act as proof of an agreement to commit a felony, conspiracy is still largely inferred from circumstantial evidence. Thus, individual conspirators need not even know of the existence or the identity of all the other conspirators. Two persons may be found to have conspired with each other simply by making separate agreements with a third party.

Once a person has entered into an agreement, it is very difficult to limit the scope of that person’s liability for the acts of others included in the conspiracy. Under United States federal law, members of a conspiracy may be guilty not only of the crime of conspiracy itself but also of other unknown crimes committed by other members of the conspiracy in support of it. Many U.S. states, influenced by the Model Penal Code, have adopted statutes that do not make one an accessory to the other crime by virtue of the conspiracy alone.

Courts and statutes increasingly emphasize that proof of an agreement must be related to a specific crime. Often, however, conspiratorial organizations conduct a business rather than commit a single offense; for example, a “chain conspiracy” involves several transactions all directed toward a common unlawful objective. The courts differ as to what extent a party at one end of the chain should be liable for the acts of the parties at the other end. Also, in a “hub conspiracy,” a single person, or “hub,” such as a “fence” for stolen goods, makes separate illegal transactions with persons who have no knowledge of the others involved. The scope of United States federal conspiracy law was expanded even further by the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO), which makes it an additional federal crime to be employed by or associated with enterprises through a “pattern of racketeering activity.”

In support of such reasoning, it is argued, first, that conspiracies are an especial threat to society because of the greater power that lies in numbers and the pooling of talents. It is also said that the formation of a group impedes detection, because evidence of the conspiracy is limited to the conspirators themselves, whose reluctance to testify in court increases with the size of the group. Finally, it is speculated that the very act of agreement crystallizes and hardens the purposes of persons who alone might be less resolute.

Others argue that the Anglo-American concept of conspiracy is too elastic to prevent injustice. Beginning at least in the early 19th century, England defined conspiracy as a combination “either to do an unlawful act or a lawful act by unlawful means.” The unlawful act or means need not themselves be criminal, however. While this remains the law in many American jurisdictions, some states have followed the Model Penal Code in limiting the crime of conspiracy to combinations of persons with the purpose of committing acts that are themselves crimes. No Continental country permits conviction for conspiracy if the aim of the agreement is itself legal.

It is common in the United States to punish a conspiracy to commit an offense more harshly than the commission of the offense itself, but there has been a growing trend in the states, under the sway of the Model Penal Code, to follow the continental European example of making the punishment for conspiracy the same as or less than that for the offense itself. Also, instead of adding the punishment for conspiracy to that for the separate crime, these states require that punishment be given for one offense or the other but not for both. The harshness of the traditional rule was mitigated by the doctrine that if one of the necessary parties to a conspiracy could not be convicted, the other party could not be convicted either. In some jurisdictions this doctrine has been dropped so that a party may be guilty of conspiracy regardless of the status of that individual’s partner.

Conspiracies that relate to political offenses and to economic warfare between businesses and between management and labour are usually regulated by statute. The concept of conspiracy itself, however, is often limited by the vagueness of its common-law background.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.