United States v. Francisco Jimenez Recio and Adrian Lopez-meza (537 U.S. 270)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 21, 2003 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 537 U.S. 270 · 123 S. Ct. 819
- Decided
- January 21, 2003
- Term
- October Term 2002
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. We here consider the validity of a Ninth Circuit rule that a conspiracy ends automatically when the object of the conspiracy becomes impossible to achieve — when, for example, the Government frustrates a drug conspiracy’s objective by seizing the drugs that its members have agreed to distribute. In our view, conspiracy law does not contain any such “automatic termination” rule. I In United States v. Cruz, 127 F. 3d 791, 795 (CA9 1997), the Ninth Circuit, following the language of an earlier case, United States v. Castro, 972 F. 2d 1107, 1112 (CA9 1992), wrote that a conspiracy terminates when “ ‘there is affirmative evidence of abandonment, withdrawal, disavowal or defeat of the object" of the conspiracy.’” (Emphasis added.) It considered the conviction of an individual who, the Government had charged, joined a conspiracy (to distribute drugs) after the Government had seized the drugs in question. The Circuit found that the Government’s seizure of the drugs guaranteed the “defeat” of the conspiracy’s objective, namely, drug distribution. The Circuit held that the conspiracy had terminated with that “defeat,” i. e., when the Government seized the drugs. Hence the individual, who had joined the conspiracy after that point, could not be convicted as a conspiracy member. In this case the lower courts applied the Cruz rule to…
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