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conspiracy

Last modified: Thu Feb 23 16:37:37 2006

Conspiracy has been informally defined as `an agreement to carry out an unlawful act, or a lawful act by unlawful means'. It is an indictable offence. `Unlawful' has been construed quite widely, and historically is not limited to criminal acts. At present there remain both statutory and common-law offenses of conspiracy. In summary, it is conspiracy to agree:

• to commit any criminal offence;
• to defraud (common law or statutory);
• to carry out an act intended to outrage public decency or corrupt public morals, whether it is (statutory) a crime or (common law) is not.

In summary, it is conspiracy to agree to commit a crime. It is also conspiracy to conspire to defraud, both in statute and common law, as fraud may be charged as a crime. There is also a conspiracy to outrage public decency, and to corrupt public morals. The statutory version applies when the act conspired to is itself a crime, whereas the common-law version may apply where the act would not be a crime if carried out by a single person. In practice, the common law conspiracy to corrupt public morals is unlikely to be charged, because most acts that would attract this charge would be crimes.

There are a number of problems with the MensRea of conspiracy. The CriminalLawAct1977 says that the parties must `agree' to commit the offence. However, does this mean that all the conspirators must actually intend that the offence be carried out. It appears that the Law Commission wanted a provision to that effect in the Statute, but it was left out because it was thought to be too complex. The result is a lack of clarity and conflicting decisions. In R v Anderson [1986] AC 27 D agreed to supply diamond wire to facilitate a jailbreak. Did he agree that the jailbreak be committed? In his defence he said that he did not believe that it would, and that the plan could not possibly have succeeded. The House of Lords held that the agreement itself was sufficient MensRea. However, in R v Edwards [1991] Crim LR 45 D agreed to supply amphetamine will actually indending to supply ephidrine (which would not have been illegal). Or, at least, there was a possibility that he so intended. He was not convicted, despite that the Court of Appeal should have been bound by Anderson, because it had not been shown that he intented what had been agreed.

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