{"id":85884,"date":"2018-12-30T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T19:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/?p=85884"},"modified":"2019-11-05T15:32:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T20:32:42","slug":"possible-sentencing-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/sentencing\/possible-sentencing-conspiracy","title":{"rendered":"What Is the Possible Sentencing for Conspiracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
We hear the term conspiracy all the time. Rarely is there a crime drama where a conspiracy charge isn\u2019t filed or threatened; or where there is sentencing for conspiracy. In fact, recently the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit alleging that the Trump presidential campaign, Russia, Wikileaks, and Trump\u2019s son and son-in-law engaged in a conspiracy to undercut the Democratic 2016 presidential campaign by stealing thousands of emails. Whether true or not, this is a great recent and public example.<\/p>\n
All of this makes the term \u201cconspiracy\u201d sound like a complicated legal concept that only involves high stakes criminal activity. It is actually quite simple. A conspiracy is merely an agreement \u2013 an agreement to do something illegal. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, if two people agree to rob a bank, then that is considered a conspiracy. To be a crime, however, most criminal agreements need one other thing \u2013 an overt act. That means that one or more of the conspirators has to do some act in furtherance of the criminal agreement. Thus, if two people agree to rob a bank and one of the two buys ski masks, then they have both committed the crime of conspiracy. Of course, if they actually go through with the robbery, then they would have also committed the crime of robbery as well as conspiracy. This would mean that they could be charged and sentenced for both conspiracy and the underlying offense.<\/p>\n
There are several crimes that are considered \u201cinchoate,\u201d or incomplete, crimes. In other words, the discussion or planning of a crime could be a crime in and of itself without the actual substantive crime being carried out.<\/p>\n