Also known as: target offences · target offense's · target crime
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see 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.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Yes. 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…