Chapter 8: Inchoate Crimes

Question 1

criminal attempts

Answer 1

trying but failing to commit crimes

Question 2

criminal conspiracy

Answer 2

making an agreement to commit a crime

Question 3

criminal solicitation

Answer 3

trying to get someone else to commit a crime

Question 4

inchoate offenses

Answer 4

from the Latin “to begin”; crimes that satisfy the mens rea of purpose or specific intent and the actus reus of taking some steps toward accomplishing the criminal purpose—but not enough steps to complete the intended crime

Question 5

dangerous act rationale

Answer 5

looks at how close defendants came to completing their crimes

Question 6

dangerous person rationale

Answer 6

concentrates on how fully defendants have developed their intent to commit their crime

Question 7

general attempt statute

Answer 7

a single statute that applies the attempt to commit any crime in the state’s criminal code

Question 8

specific attempt statutes

Answer 8

separate statutes that define attempts in terms of specific crimes in the criminal code, such as attempted murder, attempted robbery, and attempted rape—crimes that involved a specific intent

Question 9

attempt mens rea

Answer 9

the specific intent to commit a crime

Question 10

attempt actus reus

Answer 10

taking some steps toward completing a crime

Question 11

last act rule

Answer 11

attempt actus reus requires all but the last act needed to complete the crime

Question 12

proximity tests

Answer 12

help courts decide when defendants’ acts have taken them further than just getting ready to attempt and brought them close enough to completing crimes to qualify as attempt actus reus

Question 13

dangerous proximity tests

Answer 13

focus on dangerous conduct; they look at what remains for actors to do before they hurt society by completing the crime

Question 14

dangerous person tests

Answer 14

look at what actors have already done to demonstrate that they’re a danger to society, not just in this crime but, more important, in crimes they might commit in the future if they’re not dealt with now

Question 15

dangerous proximity to success test (the physical proximity test)

Answer 15

asks whether defendants have come “dangerously close” to completing the crime

Question 16

indispensable element test

Answer 16

asks whether defendants have reached a point where they’ve gotten control of everything they need to complete the crime

Question 17

unequivocality test

Answer 17

(“the act speaks for itself”), examines whether an ordinary person who saw the defendant’s acts without knowing her intent would believe she was determined to commit the intended crime

Question 18

probable desistance test

Answer 18

determines if defendants have gone far enough toward completing the crime that it’s unlikely they’ll turn back

Question 19

MPC substantial steps test

Answer 19

test that requires that attempters take enough steps toward completing the crime to prove that they’re determined to commit it

Question 20

legal impossibility

Answer 20

occurs when actors intend to commit crimes, and do everything they can to carry out their criminal intent, but the criminal law doesn’t ban what they did

Question 21

factual impossibility

Answer 21

occurs when actors intend to commit a crime and try to but it’s physically impossible because some fact or circumstance unknown to them interrupts or prevents the completion of the crime

Question 22

extraneous factor

Answer 22

a “stroke of luck”—namely, a circumstance beyond the attempter’s control that prevents the completion of the crime

Question 23

voluntary abandonment defense

Answer 23

(also called voluntary renunciation defense). defendants who voluntarily and completely renounce their criminal purpose can avoid criminal liability

Question 24

conspiracy

Answer 24

the crime of agreeing with one or more people to commit a crime

Question 25

conspiracy actus reus

Answer 25

consists of two parts:

1) an agreement to commit a crime
2) an overt act in furtherance of the agreement

Question 26

overt act requirement

Answer 26

the requirement of an act that furthers the agreement in conspiracy

Question 27

conspiracy mens rea

Answer 27

the mental element of conspiracy, frequently identified as specific intent by authorities, but it’s not defined clearly in statutes and it’s defined inconsistently by courts

Question 28

criminal objective

Answer 28

the criminal goal of an agreement to commit a crime

Question 29

unilateral approach to conspiracy parties

Answer 29

the rule that not all conspirators have to agree with—or even know—the other conspirators

Question 30

criminal objective of the conspiracy

Answer 30

the object of conspiracy agreements has to be to commit crimes

Question 31

wheel conspiracies

Answer 31

one or more defendants participate in every transaction (the hub of the wheel) and others participate in only one transaction (the spokes in the wheel)

Question 32

chain conspiracies

Answer 32

participants at one end of the chain may know nothing of those at the other end, but every participant handles the same commodity at different points, such as manufacture, distribution, and sale

Question 33

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)

Answer 33

imposes enhanced penalties for “all types of organized criminal behavior, that is, enterprise criminality—from simple political to sophisticated white-collar schemes to traditional Mafia-type endeavors”

Question 34

racketeering

Answer 34

original meaning was the extortion of money or advantage by threat or force; now the meaning has expanded to include a pattern of illegal activity (such as extortion and murder) carried out in the furtherance of an enterprise owned or controlled by those engaged in the activity

Question 35

enterprise

Answer 35

just about any form of human endeavor

Question 36

pattern of racketeering activity

Answer 36

committing two or more of a huge list of related crimes

Question 37

solicitation

Answer 37

the crime of trying to get someone else to commit a crime

Question 38

solicitation actus reus

Answer 38

acts that include some kind of inducement to commit the solicited crime

Question 39

solicitation mens rea

Answer 39

requires words that convey that their purpose is to get someone to commit a specific crime

Question 40

criminal objective of the solicitation

Answer 40

circumstance element that the objective of the solicitation is law breaking; the seriousness varies by jurisdiction from any violation to violent felony