Court Opinion

ID: 9856135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:39:02.494326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:26:08.159290
License: Public Domain

*268HARSHBARGER, Justice,
concurring:
I am reluctant to agree with Syllabus Point 4 and other parts of the opinion that might be used in the future as authority for allowing perpetrators of crimes to involve others in their misdeeds, as conspirators, when those others were not proved to have performed any act furthering the main crime.
The saving grace here is that there was proof that this conspirator did, in fact, assist in the “get-away” and did share in the proceeds of the robbery.
But we must be always alert to conspiracy dangers. Writing in a different fact situation, this Court through Justice Neely in State ex rel. Whitman v. Fox, 160 W.Va. 633 at 639, 236 S.E.2d 565, at 570, said:
“If we upheld the part of the conspiracy statute under consideration, we would be accessories to the creation of a vehicle for great prosecutorial mischief.”
What we are saying, simply, is that the dangers of conspiracy prosecutions are that they can become tools for abuse, and are to be watched with intensity.
I am authorized to say that Justice McGRAW joins me in this concurrence.