Court Opinion

ID: 9854990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:17:54.83596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:38.224851
License: Public Domain

Durham, J.
(dissenting) — The jury found that Herbert Pacheco, an aspiring hit man, planned a murder for money. Moreover, he took a substantial step toward that objective. Yet the majority overturns his conviction for conspiracy to commit murder2 solely because he conspired with a government agent rather than with another hit man. The Washington conspiracy statute does not require a co-conspirator to be a nongovernment actor. In fact, the statute explicitly envisages so-called unilateral conspiracies, as the majority admits. Because neither our case law, the statute, nor the *160rationale of conspiracy crimes compels the result arrived at by the majority, I dissent.
We accepted review solely to determine whether Washington’s conspiracy statute countenances unilateral conspiracies. Yet the majority fails to provide even a cursory analysis of the essential differences between the bilateral and unilateral approaches to conspiracy. The bilateral approach asks whether there is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a criminal act. Its focus is on the content of the agreement and whether there is a shared understanding between the conspirators. The unilateral approach is not concerned with the content of the agreement or whether there is a meeting of minds. Its sole concern is whether the agreement, shared or not, objectively manifests the criminal intent of at least one of the conspirators. The majority does not even mention this crucial difference, and instead merely assumes that all conspiracies must be bilateral. In other words, the majority assumes precisely what it is supposed to prove; it begs the question.
The result is a tangle of inaccuracies. First, the majority repeatedly contends that our decision in State v. Valladares, 99 Wn.2d 663, 664 P.2d 508 (1983) either adopted (majority, at 156) or supports (majority, at 155) the bilateral theory of conspiracies. That is not true. In fact, Valladares explicitly reserved the question. 99 Wn.2d at 671 ("We need not decide here what result might have been reached had” the defendant been charged with conspiring with two government agents.) Valladares decided only that, in a joint trial of co-conspirators, the jury verdict is inconsistent if one defendant is convicted of conspiracy while "his alleged coconspirator has been found not to have entered into any alleged agreement and no conspiracy with an unnamed coconspirator has been alleged.” 99 Wn.2d at 670. Valladares is about jury verdict consistency. The closest Valladares comes to commenting on the conspiracy statute itself is to note that "the Washington Legislature appears to have adopted a unilateral approach to conspiracy by focusing on the culpability of the individual actor.” Valladares, at 670.
*161Next, the majority portrays the unilateral approach to conspiracy as an outdated relic from a bygone era. The Model Penal Code endorses unilateral conspiracies, the majority admits, but "[ejvery federal court which has since considered the issue” has adopted the bilateral approach. Majority, at 157. The majority neglects to mention that all the federal courts adopting bilateral conspiracy are construing a different statute, one whose language requires bilateral conspiracies. See 18 U.S.C. § 371 ("If two or more persons conspire ... to commit any offense against the United States”). In contrast, the Model Penal Code defines conspiracy "in terms of one person’s agreeing with another, rather than in terms of an agreement among or between two or more people.” United States v. Rosenblatt, 554 F.2d 36, 38 n.2 (2d Cir. 1977).
The code embodies a significant change in emphasis. In its view, the major basis of conspiratorial liability is not the group nature of the activity but the firm purpose of an individual to commit a crime which is objectively manifested in conspiring. See Model Penal Code § 5.03(1) cmt. at 104-05 (Tentative Draft No. 10, 1960). The Washington conspiracy statute tracks the Model Penal Code’s language rather than the "two or more persons” language of the general federal conspiracy statute. Compare RCW 9A.28.040 with Model Penal Code § 5.03. In any event, far from being antiquated or obsolete, the "movement toward a unilateral theory of the crime is the modern trend in conspiracy law.” Patrick A. Broderick, Note, Conditional Objectives of Conspiracies, 94 Yale L.J. 895, 906 n.64 (1985). See also Dierdre A. Burgman, Unilateral Conspiracy: Three Critical Perspectives, 29 De-Paul L. Rev. 75, 75 n.3 (1979) (listing 30 states that have adopted statutes conforming to Model Penal Code’s unilateral approach).
A comparison of the revised Washington conspiracy statute with its predecessor is far more revealing of legislative intent than the majority’s simplistic and premature resort to *162dictionary definitions.3 See Clark v. Pacificorp, 118 Wn.2d 167, 822 P.2d 162 (1991) (legislative intent is to be ascertained from the statute as a whole and from the sequence of all statutes relating to the same subject matter). The predecessor statute used the phrase "[wjhenever two or more persons shall conspire”, which parallels the federal conspiracy statute and clearly requires bilateral conspiracy. Former RCW 9.22.010 (repealed in 1975). The revised statute, in contrast, tracks the definitional language of the Model Penal Code, which adopts unilateral conspiracy.4
Under a unilateral formulation, the crime of conspiracy is committed when a person agrees to proceed in a prohibited manner; under a bilateral formulation, the crime of conspiracy is committed when two or more persons agree to proceed in such manner.
Peter Buscemi, Note, Conspiracy: Statutory Reform Since the Model Penal Code, 75 Colum. L. Rev. 1122, 1136 (1975). The contrast between the prior and the present statute is clear, precise, and determinative.
Next, the majority constructs a straw man by claiming that the primary purpose of conspiracy is "the increased danger to society posed by group criminal activity”. Majority, at 156. Preventing group criminal activity is the rationale behind bilateral conspiracy, but that rationale was decisively *163rejected by the Model Penal Code. At best, controlling group criminal activity is only one rationale for conspiracy statutes.
A bilateral theory of conspiracy and the rigid standard of mutuality that it demands . . . are inconsistent with the recognition of an independent rationale for conspiracy law based on a conspirator’s firm expectation of committing a crime.
Broderick, 94 Yale L.J. at 906 n.64.
The majority compounds its own confusion by contending that unilateral conspiracies are factually impossible and therefore presumptively invalid. Majority at 157 ("When one party merely pretends to agree, the other party, whatever he or she may believe about the pretender, is in fact not conspiring with anyone.”). This argument amounts to the truism that it is factually impossible to have a "meeting of minds” on the commission of a future crime if one of the minds is a government agent who does not intend to commit the criminal act. However, a "meeting of minds” is not a prerequisite of unilateral conspiracy. In any event, factual impossibility is not a recognized defense. See 2 Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 6.3(2), at 42 (1986). The majority does nothing more than restate the discredited assumption that all conspiracies must be bilateral because conspiracy statutes attempt to target only group criminal activity.
Finally, I share the majority’s concern about the potential for abuse of unilateral conspiracy. However, the majority fails to take into consideration the effect of the entrapment defense. The potential for abuse is further restricted by the statute itself, which requires not only an agreement to engage in criminal conduct but also "a substantial step in pursuance of such agreement”. RCW 9A.28.040(1). See also Buscemi, 75 Colum. L. Rev. at 1153-54 (Washington’s substantial step requirement provides stricter standard for overt act than majority of states adopting unilateral conspiracy). In the end, the majority succeeds only in providing a superfluous protection to criminal defendants at the price *164of hamstringing government attempts to nip criminal acts in the bud.
Andersen, C.J., and Brachtenbach and Guy, JJ., concur with Durham, J.

Pacheco was also convicted of conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance. Pacheco’s criminal aspirations are all the more appalling in light of his position of public trust as a Clark County deputy.

The majority relies on a vague definition from Black’s Law Dictionary of "agreement” as "[a] meeting of two or more minds” (majority, at 154) that is equally applicable to conspiracies and contracts. Not only does this ignore the far more relevant question of the actual changes in the sequence of statutes, it also disregards the crucial differences between a conspiracy and a contract. 2 Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 6.4, at 71 (1986) ("One might suppose that the agreement necessary for conspiracy is essentially like the agreement or 'meeting of the minds’ which is critical to a contract, but this is not the case.”).

As the code’s commentary states, the new definition "departs from the traditional view of conspiracy as an entirely bilateral or multilateral relationship, the view inherent in the standard formulation cast in terms of 'two or more persons’ agreeing or combining to commit a crime. Attention is directed instead to each individual’s culpability by framing the definition in terms of the conduct which suffices to establish the liability of any given actor, rather than the conduct of a group of which he is charged to be a part”. Model Penal Code § 5.03(1) cmt., at 104-05 (Tentative Draft No. 10, 1960).