If you or a loved one is accused of conspiracy, racketeering, or organized crime, you should strongly consider retaining counsel. Such cases are significantly more complicated than the vast majority of prosecutions and usually involve higher stakes for the accused. Defendants facing such charges should strongly consider hiring an attorney with relevant experience.
Complicating factors include the admissibility of evidence between co-defendants, defense coordination versus cooperation with the State, and the compound nature of proving inchoate crimes, which require the State to show both a meeting of the minds (inchoate crime such as solicitation / conspiracy) and a shared criminal objective (predicate crime – what was solicited or was the object of the conspiracy).
Oregon law permits the State to punish attempted crimes – without proving that the crime attempted occurred. These are “inchoate” or incomplete crimes and include aiding, abetting, solicitation, and conspiracy among others.
The most common inchoate crime is Solicitation of Prostitution. Most of those cases involve a law enforcement agent posing as a decoy prostitute through online postings. To successfully prove Solicitation, the State only needs to show that the Defendant believed (s)he was agreeing to or promoting a crime (e.g., hiring a prostitute). The State does not need to show that actual prostitution occurred. In such a scenario, the Defendant is punished for encouraging (soliciting) a crime that was never committed and never was going to be committed.
Criminal cases are usually investigated and litigated based on specific allegations about individual behavior. However Oregon law also empowers the state to punish individuals for another person’s conduct in cases involving inchoate crimes. Such cases are governed by complex principles that need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by experienced defense counsel. These cases differ from more typical prosecutions in how they implicate the admissibility of evidence, sentencing, and other factors.
As with solicitation, charges such as Conspiracy and Racketeering do not require the State to show that the criminal objective (predicate crime) was successfully accomplished. The State also retains the ability to charge individuals both for their individual conduct and also for the reasonably foreseeable conduct of co-conspirators.
The rules governing evidence, shared liability and Defense of organized crime cases generally are complicated. Each case is different and requires independent legal counsel for each Defendant. If you or a loved one are involved in a Conspiracy or Racketeering case you should strong consider investing in quality defense counsel.
