Conspiracy

Definition

The word conspiracy is both a legal definition of a crime and a noun denoting a specific group of people intent upon a specific action. The word originates from two Latin roots, con which means “with, together” and spirare “to breath.”

Generally, a conspiracy is defined as an agreement between two or more persons to commit an unlawful act, or to accomplish a lawful purpose by unlawful means. When more than two persons are involved, it is not necessary that they have met each other, or even know of the existence of all the other members of the conspiracy. Liability for the acts of others involved in the conspiracy, however, varies among courts.

Conspiracy can be prosecuted as a crime or as a tort under civil law. Some countries limit conspiracy to the agreement to commit offenses against the state, whereas statutory law, in some U.S. states, limits conspiracy to criminal purposes.

Outside the legal context, the word has developed different connotations in the English lexicon.

Criminal Law

In the United States and Britian, a criminal conspiracy is defined as an agreement between two or more people to break the law at some moment in time. While other countries do have laws against conspiracy, the U.S. and United Kingdom are the two that have had the most stringent punishments for the longest time, resulting from legal precedents in common law

In the United States, at the federal level conspiracy is broken down into three types: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, Conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States, and solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

1. The first offense, Conspiracy to commit an offense or defraud the United States, includes all non-violent, illegal acts against the United States as a country, or the U.S. government. Such examples would be a board of directors conspiring to commit tax fraud against the IRS, or a group of people who agree to disclose confidential information to the public. All federal “white collar” crimes fit into this category. The U.S. Code prescribes fines, five years imprisonment, or both as punishment.

1. The second type of conspiracy, to impede or injure an officer of the United States, deals with any group that would agree to deliberately threaten, manipulate, bride or injure any United States official, effectively hampering or hindering their ability to execute their official duties. An example of this would be drug dealers agreeing to bride, threaten or physically injure U.S. Custom agents in order to smuggle drugs into the country. The maximum amount of imprisonment for such a charge is six years, with or without fines. .

1. The third and last definition of conspiracy by the United States Code is the solicitation to commit a crime of violence. Any group that hires, manipulates or forces another person to commit an act of violence is punishable. Punishment for this conspiracy charge is a maximum of half the punishment of the crime intended/executed (For example if the crime was murder, than the defendants would be sentenced for half the term of punishment that a murder charge carries). An example of this would be a person hired by a crime organization to commit assault or murder.

It should be noted that in most court cases conspiracy is not the sole indictment. Conspiracy is usually added along with a charge for the crime attempted if it was not fully executed or for the crime itself if it was successfully carried out. Hence most defendants in a conspiracy trial also face separate punishments for the attempted/executed crime, which is the reason that most conspiracy crimes do not carry heavy punishments. It is frequently used as a prosecutory device to supplement other charges in order to secure longer sentences, or as a legal means to indict those involved in criminal activities that have little if any evidence against them.

Some statutes in the U.S. take the definition of criminal conspiracy further, requiring that there also be intent and an overt act accompanied by the agreement for a conviction. The intention of committing the crime agreed upon and an overt act that, while not necessarily the crime itself, in some way furthers the plans or hides the crime afterwards are all considered equal and necessary for a conspiracy to happen. The reason for this dissemination of conspiracy is to avoid the prosecution of words and thoughts alone. Such definitions are not universal. In The United States v. Shabani, 513 U.S. 10 (1994), the Supreme Court left the inclusion of an overt act of furtherance and intent in the criminal code up to the legislative to decide. Hence there is no one distinct definition of conspiracy although the essential agreement, which is at the core of all conspiracies, is a common variable throughout all statutes.

Most statutes state that it does not matter if the crime agreed upon is even executed (although the execution or deliberate attempt of the crime agreed upon will not be rolled up into the conspiracy charges, but will stand as separate offenses on their own). Conspiracy is merely the planning of such crimes. Further, if the crime, say a murder, is successfully carried out, everyone involved in the conspiracy, not just those who actual performed the murder, are guilty. Conspiracy statues also take into account any members that join the conspiracy after the initial agreement, as being as liable as those who originally agreed upon the crime.

Sometimes a defendant will claim they had renounced the group of conspirators before either the crime was committed or the group was arrested and charged, and therefore are innocent. However, in most jurisdictions such a defense would only be viable if there was proof of “substantial effort to prevent the commission of the conspiratorial plan”, and some statues only allow the defense if “the commission of the underlying crime was in fact prevented”. .

It is also an option for prosecutors, when bringing conspiracy charges, to decline to indict all members of the conspiracy (though their existence may be mentioned in an indictment). Such un-indicted co-conspirators are commonly found when the identities or whereabouts of members of a conspiracy are unknown; or when the prosecution is only concerned with a particular individual among the conspirators. This is common when the target of the indictment is an elected official or an organized crime leader; and the co-conspirators are persons of little or no public importance. More famously, President Richard Nixon was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator by the Watergate special prosecutor, in an event leading up to his eventual resignation.

Conspiracy differs in requirements and punishments from state to state. New York has adopted a unilateral policy on conspiracy which means that the initial intent of the conspirators to commit a crime is all that matters; any individual’s intention varying from the original at any other time is considered moot. The New York Penal Code lists six different degrees of conspiracy, the most severe being a Class A Felony and is defined as a person over the age of 18 to conspire with at least one individual under the age of 16 to commit a class A felony, which carries a maximum punishment of life in prison. In comparison, the lowest form of conspiracy is considered a Class B misdemeanor and has a maximum sentencing of six months in jail.

California, on the other hand, views a conspiracy as at least two people forming an agreement to commit a crime, and at least one of them performing some act in furtherance to committing the crime, ignoring the idea of intent completely. Each person is punishable in the same manner and to the same extent as is provided for the punishment of the crime itself.

Tort Law

In the law of tort, the legal elements necessary to establish a civil conspiracy are substantially the same as for establishing a criminal conspiracy, i.e. there is an agreement between two or more natural persons to break the law at some time in the future or to achieve a lawful aim by unlawful means. The criminal law often requires one of the conspirators to take an overt step to accomplish the illegal act to demonstrate the reality of their intention to break the law, whereas in a civil conspiracy, an overt act towards accomplishing the wrongful goal may not be required. Any conspiracy lawsuit brought to a Civil Court would require that the plaintiff prove that the conspiracy of the defendants resulted in some form of damage to the defendant, such as monetary, propriety, personal health or even public reputation. A Civil Court's sole responsibility is to assess the amount of damage sustained and to accurately award retribution to the injured party. Therefore, a Civil Conspiracy only becomes a Civil legal issue when it does provible damage to another person or party.

Conspiracy in Business Litigation

Business litigation often involves the use of conspiracy lawsuits against two or more corporations. Often joined in the lawsuit as defendants are the officers of the companies and outside accountants, attorneys, and similar fiduciaries.

Such conspiracy cases often take the form of antitrust lawsuits, usually litigated in federal court, where the plaintiff seeks treble damages for overpayments caused by price-fixing above the market rate. The federal Sherman Antitrust Act provides both civil and criminal penalties. Other agreements among businesses and their agents for group boycotts, to monopolize, and to set predatory prices with intent to drive a small competitor out of business, would be actionable

Conspiracies in violation of the federal securities laws such as the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 form another area where intense civil and criminal lawsuits occur over the existence or non-existence of an alleged conspiracy. Both the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice bring legal actions for conspiracies to violate the securities laws. For example,a regional bank called PNC Financial Services Group Inc. through a subsidiary agreed, in June 2003, to pay $115 million in civil fines and restitution to settle the SEC's allegations of securities fraud. The subsidiary was accused of conspiracy to violate securities laws by transferring $762 million in troubled loans and investments to off-balance-sheet entities in 2001. In that case, the Justice Department deferred prosecution of PNC, citing its cooperation in a related investigation. Similarly, the civil litigation against the tobacco companies to recover health care costs, alleges a conspiracy under the Medical Care Recovery Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2651, et seq. (Count One), the Medicare Secondary Payer provisions of Subchapter 18 of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1395y(b)(2)(B)(ii) &(iii) (Count Two), and the civil provisions of Chapter 96 of Title 18, United States Code, codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961 through 1968, entitled Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") to deceive the American public about the health effects of smoking

Conspiracy in Pop Culture

In the last thirty years conspiracy as both a fictional motif and explanation for real events has become widespread. Authors and investigators have leveled claims of conspiracies being responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the cover-up of a crashed UFO in the New Mexican desert in 1949 and even have suggested that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax. A majority of these conspiracy theorists drawn conclusions based on speculation and hardly any significant evidence has been produced to verify such claims, although there are serious investigators who present legitimate reports of hidden governmental activities, such as the Watergate cover-up that was perpetuated by members of the Nixon administration.

In movies, television shows and books, conspiracies have become popular plot points, usually involving a section of the government or a large corporation. For example, the television series The X-Files proposed a massive conspiracy, involving all the governments of the world, between men of power and extraterrestrials.

Whether claimed to be real or works of fiction, the very fact that conspiracies capture society’s imagination says quite a lot about how people view the larger forces around them. Shadowy men in high ranking government or business positions, making self-interested decisions that affect millions of people and going to any length necessary to keep their actions concealed from the public has become an almost pseudo-archetype in the collective unconscious. Certainly such conspiracies do exist, as can be seen with the recent Enron scandal, but such vast conspiracies that involve long periods of time and many people to cover-up such monumental events as contact with an alien species or the murder of a President speak more to a general paranoia for those who have power and what they do with it.

External Links

• Law.com Legal Database
• Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute
• National Lawyers Guild Resources for Lawyers and legal information
• Findlaw Contains all current versions of state and federal codes, statues and constitutions.
• Moon Base Clavius Website of investigators claiming the Apollo Moon Landing was a hoax
• Conspiracy Planet Articles that present current events with a "conspiracy theory" slant.
• JFK Assasination Website
• Conspiracy Theory Literature FAQ Overview of the elements of conspiracy theories.

Footnote

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