California Conspiracy Penal Code 182
The crime of conspiracy is commonly heard more on the federal level than on the state level, and it involves two or more people hatching a plan to commit a crime such as a bank robbery.
In such a situation, the bank robbery on its own is a crime, and the mere corroboration to rob the bank can be a conspiracy, which is a serious felony.
A conspiracy charge requires the agreement between two or more people to commit an offense. You also need an overt act that furthers the common interest.
The prosecutors have the burden of proving the existence of an agreement to commit a crime. This can be accomplished by flipping someone and turning them to a state witness or gathering evidence of communication showing there was some agreement.
Sometimes, even if you don’t end up being convicted for the alleged crime, you can still go down for the conspiracy, which has its own punishment. There will be a relationship in terms of the severity of the punishment of the underlying offense and that of conspiracy.
If for instance, someone and a couple of his friend purchase drugs to repackage and later sell it at the community college, but one of them takes the drugs and takes off, they could still be in trouble for the conspiracy to sell drugs at the community college one because they had agreed to do it.
It is obvious that the punishment of intending to distribute the drugs would not be the same as that of the bank robbery because the latter is more serious than selling weed at a junior college.
The way to get out of a conspiracy is to abandon your part, and you have to make it known. You have to convince the judge that you bailed out before you did anything wrong. This isn’t always easy to prove, as it is hard to record your bailing out of a planned heist.
If you have been charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, contact Mr. Mark Shayani of Pacific Attorney Group.
