§705-522  Conspiracy with multiple criminal
objectives.  If a person conspires to commit a number of crimes, the person
is guilty of only one conspiracy if the multiple crimes are the object of the
same agreement or continuous conspiratorial relationship. [L 1972, c 9, pt of
§1; gen ch 1993]



 



COMMENTARY ON §705-522



 



  This section substantially adopts the language of §5.03(3) of
the Model Penal Code.  In conspiracy, the danger for which the sanction is
imposed arises out of the special circumstances of the joining of several
individuals to effect a criminal object.  Here, the law quite correctly
recognizes that there is a special and unique danger in individuals combining
to commit crime: this danger is easily seen in the pervasive and pernicious
aspects of so-called "organized crime" today.  Hence it may be seen
that, in the area of conspiracy, the particular crimes which are the object of
the conspiracy are of concern only in defining the criminality of the
conspiratorial intent.  Since it is the actual combination or agreement which
we seek to condemn, each combination or agreement constitutes a single separate
crime of conspiracy, regardless of how many separate offenses are intended
under the agreement.



  The traditional conspiracy question, of whether different
objectives executed over a period of time are included in the same agreement,
is largely avoided by the modifying clause at the end of the section.  Rather
than considering such questions of intent and causality, the Code focuses upon
the more significant question of a continuous association for criminal
purposes.[1]



  In this area, the Code is in accord with the present
prevailing doctrine of most jurisdictions.  The development of the present
doctrine may easily be traced in a series of Supreme Court decisions.



  In United States v. Rabinowich,[2] the Court recognized that
a conspiracy is not to be equated with the commission of the crime
contemplated, and neither arises under nor violates the statute the violation
of which is its object.[3]  Subsequently, in Frohwerk v. United States,[4] the
Supreme Court attempted to settle a question which had formerly been uncertain
in the federal courts; i.e., whether a conspiracy was singular although its
objectives were multiple.  The Court held that "the conspiracy is the
crime, and that is one, however diverse its objects."[5]  The issue was
resolved in Braverman v. United States,[6] wherein the Court explains,



Whether the
object of a single agreement is to commit one or many crimes, it is in either
case that agreement which constitutes the conspiracy which the statute
punishes.  The one agreement cannot be taken to be several agreements and hence
several conspiracies because it envisages the violation of several statutes
rather than one.[7]



It is this view which is adopted in both the Model Penal Code
and the present Code.



  Previous Hawaii law, in treating one joining after the
formation of a conspiracy as if one had been part of it from the beginning,[8]
would include in one's criminal object those crimes perpetrated before one
joined.  Hence, under past Hawaii law, if A and B conspired to rob V and sell
the stolen goods at various remote locations, C, who joined after the robbery
of V, would be held guilty of the conspiracy to rob V, as well as of the conspiracy
to distribute the stolen goods.[9]  The Code, in its unilateral approach to
conspiratorial liability, holds a person liable for conspiracy only with
respect to those acts and results which the person's agreement includes.  Hence
in the above example, C is liable only of conspiracy to distribute stolen
goods, and not of conspiracy to commit robbery.  This result is obtained by the
language requiring that the crimes be the object of the same agreement or
relationship into which the conspirator has entered.



 



__________



§705-522 Commentary:



 



1.  M.P.C., Tentative Draft No. 10, comments at 129-30 (1960).



 



2.  238 U.S. 78 (1915).



 



3.  Id. at 87.



 



4.  249 U.S. 204 (1919).



 



5.  Id. at 210.



 



6.  317 U.S. 49 (1942).



 



7.  Id. at 53-54; for a complete discussion of this line of
cases, see M.P.C., Tentative Draft No. 10, comments at 127-128 (1960).



 



8.  H.R.S. §728-2.



 



9.  See Territory of Hawaii v. Kitabayashi, 41 Haw. 428 (1956).