I read an article today (which I won’t link to due to its general poor quality) in which it was stated that a person was offered a bribe, and attempted to report it to law enforcement, but was told that since he didn’t accept the bribe, he didn’t have a case.
Nonsense of course, but it got me to wondering.
If someone tried to bribe me, and in order to procure evidence of the offer I accepted the bribe, and then went immediately to the police, would I be guilty of accepting the bribe? Does my immediate going to the police indicate anything about intent, and does intent make any difference as to whether I committed a crime?
The federal bribery statute requires only an offer or a solicitation of a bribe. So it’s irrelevant whether the “innocent” official accepts it.
It may make a difference for the purposes of a conspiracy charge. At (Anglo-American) common law, there could be no conspiracy unless there were two guilty minds. So if you conspired to commit a crime with an undercover cop, you could not be found guilty (since the cop was only pretending to conspire with you.) This is called the “bilateral theory” of conspiracy.
Today, most jurisdictions have abolished this requirement and adopted the unilateral theory, which as you might have guessed, requires only one guilty mind. So you can be convicted of conspiracy to commit bribery even if the other person doesn’t take it. However, there are some jurisdictions which retain the bilateral requirement.
Usually, the authorities will make you go back and accept the actual bribe under supervised conditions, because this makes the case a near slam-dunk for the DA as opposed to it just being your word against theirs…
Richard Kelly, a Congressman from Florida, was ccaught on tape pocketing $25,000 in the Abscam scandal. Kelly argued that he only accepted the bribe because he was running his own, secret, independent investigation.
The jury had trouble swallowing this, as did the judge, the appeals court, and the federal prison where he served his sentence.
Isn’t that how Linda Tripp got off? What she did, recording the conversations, was illegal, but they gave her immunity from prosecution?
No. Tripp was immune from federal prosecution, but she was still subject to prosecution - and indeed was charged - under Maryland state law. The state charges were dropped when the judge ruled that Monica Lewinsky could not testify against Tripp.