Also known as: target offences · target offense's · target crime
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The underlying crime that a defendant seeks to commit through an inchoate offense such as attempt or conspiracy.
Tyrone Tran pried open a locked shipping container on the dock and climbed inside carrying tools to break into crates of electronics. He intended to remove several crates before the ship departed. Security detained him before any crate was opened. His actions placed him in dangerous proximity to completing the target offense of theft.
Tamara Tan supplied detailed plans and tools to an associate intending to facilitate a robbery at a warehouse. The associate instead committed murder during the robbery. Tan's purposeful aid to the planned robbery made her liable for the murder as a reasonably foreseeable consequence even though she did not intend that specific result.
After their friend was shot by rival gang member Mayse Walker, defendants Barry Dewayne Woods and John Windham, along with several accomplices, set out to find Walker in an apparent effort to retaliate for the shooting. Wearing ski masks and armed with guns, they went to the apartment of Susan Allen and Trudy Johnson, two of Walker's acquaintances. After Woods beat up one of the women's neighbors, Woods and his cohorts forcibly entered the apartment while Windham waited outside as a lookout. At gunpoint the intruders demanded to know Walker's whereabouts, assaulted both women, and shot Johnson, but Allen and Johnson could not tell them where to find Walker. After being warned that someone said the police were coming, the intruders departed with two automobile tires Walker had stored at the apartment. Outside a nearby apartment complex the assailants loaded the tires into their car. A few parking stalls away Craig Chmelik and James McMahon were preparing to depart in Chmelik's Mustang. Noticing the pair, Woods drew a large handgun, loaded it, and fired six shots into the Mustang, wounding McMahon and killing Chmelik. After the shooting Woods and Windham went to a friend's house where Woods hid the murder weapon and he and Windham apparently flushed bullet shells down the toilet. Defendants were convicted of first degree murder of Chmelik, attempted murder of McMahon, and assaults with firearms on Allen and Johnson, with numerous enhancing allegations found true including that Woods used a firearm and Windham was armed with a gun. During deliberations, the jury sent the trial court the question whether a defendant can be found guilty of aiding and abetting a murder in the second degree if the actual perpetrator of the same murder is determined to be guilty of murder in the first degree. After discussing the matter with counsel, the trial court answered no. Windham appealed the conviction to the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Third District, contending the trial court's response misinstructed the jury on aider and abettor liability. The published portion of the opinion addresses the instructional issue arising from the jury's question and the trial court's answer.
View caseYes. Once any participant completes the target offense pursuant to the agreement, the conspiracy merges into the completed felony and cannot support a separate conviction.
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The traditional common law proximity test requires the defendant's overt act to come dangerously close to completing the target offense, going beyond mere preparation.
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No. Factual impossibility supplies no defense when the defendant's conduct would have constituted the target offense if the facts had been as the defendant believed them to be.
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Conduct that leaves an essential final act undone, such as failing to press an enter key after loading destructive code, remains mere preparation and does not reach the target offense.
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Positioning a lethal syringe within an inch of the victim's skin after preparing an overdose crosses into attempt because only a slight further movement is needed to complete the target offense.
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…and abettor rendered aid with an intent or purpose of either committing, or of encouraging or facilitating commission of, the target offense. It was, therefore, error for the trial court to refuse the modified instruction requested by appellant. Our examination of the record convinces us that the error in this case was…