Seems to me that free speech aint all that its cracked up to be, when sombody can get busted for planning something. What kinna crimes can you get busted for just talking about.
Well, actually, you can’t. In general, talking about a crime is not a conspiracy - there must be at least one overt act in futherance of the conspiracy. So you can sit around all day planning the bank heist, and it’s legal. But when you go out and buy the explosives and the Nixon masks, you’ve completed the crime of conspiracy.
- Rick
What about talking about assassinating the president? That could get you in trouble couldn’t it?
Of course, if you’re in an airport and are talking about explosives, you could get in trouble for that, but that’s a bit different.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
I imagine conspiracy to commit would entail showing that you had reason to believe that the plans would lead to the commission of a crime.
If you sit and talk about ‘the ultimate bank heist’ with friends, it’s okay. But, if one of the friends has, that you know of, robbed a bank, then you’d have a harder time saying you didn’t intend for the plans to be used. Similarly, talking about a generic crime is different than obtaining floor plans for a local bank and staking out nearby to watch the guards’ activities.
I think though that cospiracy to commit is a rarely used charge, existing mainly to give them something to put away mob leaders and such.
The following references are Canadian.
465.1©: Every one who conspires with any one to commit an indicatable offence not proved for in paragraph (a) or (b) [murder or false prosecution] is guilty of an indicatable offence and liable to the same punishment as that to which an accused who is guilty of that offence would, on conviction, be liable;
From Mulcahy v. The Queen: A conspiracy consists not merely in the intention of two or more, but in the agreement of two or more to do an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means. So long as such a design exists in intention only, it is not indicatble. When two agree to carry it into effect, the very plot is an act in itself and the act of each of the parties… punishable if for a criminal offence.
So, just intending to rob a bank isn’t a crime, but when you make the first real-world plan, even probably, going to get blueprints or something, it would become an indicatable offence, with all parties equally liable, even if only one of them was there in person.
They will press charges agaist you for trying to hire a hit man to kill your spouse. Guess they figure if you got that kind of money then it should be put into lawyers pockets!
watch what you say
or they’ll be calling
you a radical,
a liberal,fanatical
a criminal…
They will press charges agaist you
for trying to hire a hit man to kill
your spouse. Guess they figure if you
got that kind of money then it should
be put into lawyers pockets!
watch what you say
or they’ll be calling
you a radical,
a liberal,fanatical
a criminal…
Sometimes prosecutors will charge conspiracy in order to use certain hearsay evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible.
Hearsay is an out-of-court statement that is offered into evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement.
Normally, if two people are planning a crime, their discussions do not take place in a courtroom during the trial. 
So evidence of those discussions may be hearsay. Although the statement against interest exception may also apply, the conspiracy charge makes relevant what the state of mind of each person was. If you offer an out of court statement into evidence not to prove the truth of the statement, but to show the state of mind created, it is not hearsay.
I know that may sound convoluted, but that’s the rule.
- Rick
Conspiracy is also useful in prosecuting accomplices after a crime is committed. Let’s say someone masterminds a bank robbery but has his accomplices do all the work and is not physically present when the crime is committed. Conspiracy laws allow him to be prosecuted even though he took no actual physical actions to commit the crime.