Conspiracy - sustany/dvg GitHub Wiki

Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal.� Most U.S. jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement.� An overt act is a statutory requirement, not a constitutional one. See Whitfield v. United States, 453 U.S. 209 (2005). The illegal act is the conspiracy's "target offense.�

Conspiracy generally carries a penalty on its own.� In addition, conspiracies allow for derivative liability where conspirators can also be punished for the illegal acts carried out by other members, even if they were not directly involved.� Thus, where one or more members of the conspiracy committed illegal acts to further the conspiracy's goals, all members of the conspiracy may be held accountable for those acts.��

Where no one has actually committed a criminal act, the punishment varies.� Some conspiracy statutes assign the same punishment for conspiracy as for the target offense.� Others impose lesser penalties.

Conspiracy applies to both civil and criminal offenses. For example, you may conspire to commit murder, or conspire to commit fraud.