Sentencing — conspiracy

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — conspiracy

Even though a conspiracy to commit robbery was unsuccessful, the sentencing court properly denied a three-level reduction in calculating the defendant’s guideline.

“A conspiracy is just an agreement, almost always an oral one. And talk is cheap. Many conspiracies never get off the ground, never pose a real danger. The conspirators are punished anyway, but it makes sense that conspirators thwarted before their conspiracy’s aim is achieved should be punished more heavily the greater the probability that the conspiracy would have resulted in a substantive offense, which is to say (usually) that it would have inflicted tangible injury, had it not been for a fortuitous interruption. See United States v. Chapdelaine, supra, 989 F.2d at 36. For that marks it as a dangerous conspiracy, though the danger did not materialize. Much of criminal law is about taking dangerous people out of circulation, preferably before they cause harm. See Henry M. Hart, Jr., ‘The Aims of the Criminal Law,’ 23 Law & Contemporary Problems 401 (1958). In this respect criminal law is sharply different from tort law, since, as we keep saying, including very recently in Jackson v. Pollion, 733 F.3d 786, 790 (7th Cir. 2013), there is no tort without an injury. The less dangerous the conspiracy, therefore, the less needful it is to impose long sentences on the conspirators in order to protect potential victims. But the conspirators in this case were dangerous people. There is little reason to doubt that had they not been spotted by their prospective victims they would have attacked the truck a few hours later, with mayhem a likely result. To ignore that possibility and treat them as comical failures would disserve the aims of criminal justice.”

Affirmed.

13-2223 U.S. v. Dosen

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Zagel, J., Posner, J.