The Conspiracy reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Conspiracy

Alternate uses: See Conspiracy (disambiguation)

Conspiracy is the act of working in secret to obtain some goal, usually understood with negative connotations. In United States v. Shabani (1994) the US Supreme Court ruled: "...Congress intended to adopt the common law definition of conspiracy, which does not make the doing of any act other than the act of conspiring a condition of liability..." This ruling indicates that conspiracy, without any further action, can be criminal. Note that a "conspiracy", as a legal term in the US, does not always require more than one person. There are, in many nations, explicit crimes of conspiracy to commit murder et cetera.

In California, a punishable conspiracy is an agreement between at least two people to commit a crime, while in addition at least one of them does some act to commit the crime. Each person is punishable in the same manner and to the same extent as is provided for the punishment of the crime itself. [1] One example of this is The Han Twins Murder Conspiracy case, where one twin sister attempted to hire 2 youths to have her twin sister killed.

See also: conspiracy theory

Etymology

It is generally accepted that conspire comes from the Latin roots con, with, and spirare, to breathe—so to conspire literally means 'to breathe together'.

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