if true, conspiracy to commit
murder may have happened whether or not it was voted down.
That is, as long as at least two folks were in favor of
doing it - that's all that is needed to conspire to commit
murder.
No, that's actually not what the law of conspiracy says in most places. Here's one summary of generic conspiracy principles in the law (they can vary slightly from one jurisdiction to the next):
Conspiracy
A person is guilty of conspiracy if:
Two or more people agree to commit a crime, and
the people intended to enter into the agreement, and
at least one of the conspirators commits some overt act (such as some act of preparation) that furthers the conspiracy.
NOTE: A party is guilty of conspiracy when these elements are satisfied. The actual crime does not have to occur in order to hold someone accountable for conspiracy.
NOTE: A conspirator is guilty of all the crimes that his co-conspirator commits that 1) further the conspiracy and 2) were foreseeable.
Defense to Subsequent Crimes
Withdrawal
A person who is guilty of conspiracy does not have a valid defense if they withdraw, however, he has a valid defense to the subsequent crimes of the conspirators if he does the following:
engages in an affirmative act, and
the affirmative act gives notice to all co-conspirators that he is withdrawing, and
the co-conspirators have enough time to halt their plans to commit the crime.
lawnerds.com
Here is how I analyze it. A bunch of people are sitting in a room. They are really pissed about what is going on in the world. They talk about various means of protest. One of them says, loudly, "Here's what we ought to do. We ought to kill all the bastards."
Another says, "Kill which bastards?"
And the first one responds, "High government officials, anybody who supports the war" (or high taxes or gay marriage or abortion or whatever the issue du jour is that has moved this particular mass).
And a bunch of people in the crowd yell, "Yeah, let's kill the bastards!"
After a couple of minutes or hours, the shouting subsides and some cooler heads step forward and say, "No, that's wrong. We shouldn't do that." Or the cooler heads, who probably didn't shout along with the angry mob to begin with, say "Count us out" and they resign.
Ultimately, no plan to murder the officials is ever approved by the group and no such murders take place. No weapons are bought, no plans are drawn up and modified and discussed.
Has conspiracy to commit murder occurred?
No. For two reasons. First, there was no "agreement" to do anything. There were proposals, some shouting of agreement, some angry talk. But when it came time to "agree", to say, as a group, let's do this, the talk subsided and the group decided not to follow that course of action. Second, there was no "overt act" in furtherance of the conspiracy. Nobody agreed to murder the officials and then went out and got ammo or plotted to find the right time and place and triggerman and getaway car and all the rest of it.
What I have read about that meeting suggests that it was not something that resulted in an actual conspiracy to commit murder.
I find his testimony about alleged atrocities to be more troubling, frankly. I find still more troubling his chameleon-like embracement of protectionism (something that until now he has never embraced); his class warfare approach to taxation; his isolationist tendencies, most evident when he voted against having the U.S. join a UN coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait (not Iraq) in 1991.
I have serious reservations that someone that conflicted about U.S. presence overseas can effectively send a message to the U.S.'s many detractors (most of whom were detractors long before Bush took office) that the U.S. will assertively defend its interests.
I find it interesting that many in Kerry's party spoke eloquently after 9/11 about the need to address not only the terrorists but the conditions in which terrorism breeds (i.e., the economic malaise and political tyranny that rules most lands from which terrorists spring). Yet, when U.S. companies hire people in an extremely poor country (India) with the world's second or third largest Muslim population, that's no good. When the U.S. leads a coalition to oust a brutal dictator who has repressed and murdered his own people (at one point even gassing an opposition group), and who has taken aggressive military action against four nearby countries (Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel) resulting in wars which killed nearly a million people and also brought about countless rapes and an environmental catastrophe (the burning oil fields in Kuwait in 1991), they are against that.
I guess we should just keep all of the jobs for ourselves while the rest of the world wallows in even less opportunity, allow their dictators to kill people for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, and then when they rise up we should just ask them to please be nice or we might get really mad at them. Not mad enough to do something that lasts longer than a weekend, but really mad.
Those are the important issues that this election is about. This sideshow about who was seen with Jane Fonda and what crazy people said what stupid thing when who was in the room are just nonsense. I'm sure when W. was at his cocaine parties other people said some nutball things too, but we don't think that ought to be the basis for choosing a President, do we? |
