Opinion ID: 2714
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Solicitation of a Drug Crime as a Violation of Any Law Relating to a Controlled Substance

Text: To determine whether Mizrahi's solicitation conviction qualifies as a violation of . . . any law . . . relating to a controlled substance, we must first determine what state laws define the essential elements of his crime, i.e., the minimum criminal conduct necessary to sustain [his] conviction. Vargas-Sarmiento v. United States Dep't of Justice, 448 F.3d at 166 (internal quotation marks omitted). We conclude that the elements of Mizrahi's crime are defined not only by N.Y. Penal Law § 100.05(1), which generically proscribes the solicitation of felony crimes, but also by N.Y. Penal Law § 220.31, which proscribes the specifically intended drug object of Mizrahi's solicitation. [5] To explain our reasoning, we discuss inchoate crimes generally before considering Mizrahi's particular solicitation. (1) Identifying the Elements of Inchoate Crimes The law generally recognizes three inchoate crimes: conspiracy, attempt, and solicitation. See Black's Law Dictionary 1111 (8th ed.2004); Herbert Wechsler et al., The Treatment of Inchoate Crimes in the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute: Attempt, Solicitation, and Conspiracy, 61 Colum. L.Rev. 571, 572 (1961). For purposes of our analysis, a notable feature of these inchoate offenses is that the proscribed physical conduct the solicitation, the attempt, or the concerted endeavoris never criminal in the abstract. Rather, criminality arises only when the inchoate conduct has the violation of some other law as its specifically intended objective. See Wechsler at 572 (noting that conspiracy, attempt, and solicitation  always presuppose a purpose to commit another crime, i.e., the object crime (emphasis added)); Douglas N. Husak, Reasonable Risk Creation and Overinclusive Legislation, 1 Buff.Crim. L.Rev. 599, 603 (1998) (observing that [t]o charge a defendant with having committed an inchoate crime presupposes an object offense that is attempted, solicited, or is the object of the conspiracy). Thus, while inchoate conduct may be prohibited in relatively short generic statutes, see Ira P. Robbins, Double Inchoate Crimes, 26 Harv. J. Legis. 1, 4 (1989) (noting that [r]ather than try to enumerate every act to which inchoate liability attaches, legislatures frequently enact relatively short statutes containing abstract conceptual terms with universal application), such statutes do not, by themselves, define the violation of law. Rather, a second object statute is necessary to supply the critical mens rea element that makes inchoate conduct criminal. The object offense need not be consummated for a defendant to be convicted of an inchoate crime. See Andrew Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law 444 (5th ed. 2006) (An attempt fails, a conspiracy comes to nothing, words of incitement [or solicitation] are ignored, . . . [nevertheless], there may be liability for the inchoate crime.). But no conviction can be obtained for an inchoate offense unless a defendant ties his conduct to the criminally proscribed object of another statute through his specific intent. See generally Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 552, 121 S.Ct. 2404, 150 L.Ed.2d 532 (2001) (observing that common inchoate offenses such as conspiracy, attempt, and solicitation attach to [other] criminal conduct (emphasis added)). At that point, a defendant is guilty not of generic conspiracy, but of conspiracy to murder; not of generic attempt, but of attempt to kidnap; not of generic solicitation, but of solicitation to sell drugs.