270
OCTOBER TERM, 2002
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 01-1184. Argued November 12, 2002—Decided January 21, 2003
Ninth Circuit precedent states that a conspiracy terminates when " 'there is affirmative evidence of . . . defeat of the object of the conspiracy.'" United States v. Cruz, 127 F. 3d 791, 795 (emphasis added). Here, police stopped a truck carrying illegal drugs, seized the drugs, and, with the help of the truck's drivers, set up a sting. The drivers paged a contact who said he would call someone to get the truck. Respondents Jimenez Recio and Lopez-Meza appeared in a car, and the former drove away in the truck, the latter in the car. After a jury convicted them of conspiring to possess and to distribute unlawful drugs, the judge ordered a new trial because, under Cruz, the jury could not convict respondents unless it believed they had joined the conspiracy before the police seized the drugs, and it had not been so instructed. The new jury convicted respondents, who appealed. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the evidence presented at the second trial was insufficient to show that respondents had joined the conspiracy before the drug seizure.
Held: A conspiracy does not automatically terminate simply because the
Government has defeated its object. Thus, the Ninth Circuit is incorrect in its view that a conspiracy ends through "defeat" when the Government intervenes, making the conspiracy's goals impossible to achieve, even if the conspirators do not know that the Government has intervened and are totally unaware that the conspiracy is bound to fail. First, the Ninth Circuit's rule is inconsistent with basic conspiracy law. The agreement to commit an unlawful act is "a distinct evil," which "may exist and be punished whether or not the substantive crime ensues." Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52, 65. The conspiracy poses a "threat to the public" over and above the threat of the substantive crime's commission—both because the "[c]ombination in crime makes more likely the commission of [other] crimes" and because it "de-creases the probability that the individuals involved will depart from their path of criminality." E. g., Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 593-594. Where police have frustrated a conspiracy's specific objective but conspirators (unaware of that fact) have neither abandoned the conspiracy nor withdrawn, these special conspiracy-related dangers remain, as does the conspiracy's essence—the agreement to commit the
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