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To: woofie
Many criminals make foolish mistakes ....If you rob a bank and dont get the money is it a robbery? yes

Not close enough. So I tried to come up with a more accurate analogy. At first, I thought "if you were standing in the desert pointing a gun at a cactus thinking it was a bank teller, can you be tried for bank robbery?" would be closer to this case. But I realized that was off. The more accurate anaology is that if you were making plans to rob a fabricated 1st National Bank at corner of 5th and Pine Street, in Anywhere USA with someone who gave you fake blueprints, you buy the gun, gather a "crew" and draw up your plans, have you committed a crime?" Recall that the bank doesn't exist, as the 10 year old girl didn't exist. It seems that perhaps conspiracy to commit robbery may be accurate. Is there such a thing? There is conspiracy to commit murder. If the person you are conspiring to murder doesn't exist, or better yet, died in an auto accident the day before, unbknownst to you, have you committed a crime? You solicit an undercover cop posing as a hit man, despite the target being dead just 18 hours prior. Have you committed a crime? The solicitation is illegal. Still so with a nonexistent (or already dead) victim? Probably, I guess. Heck, I don't know.

54 posted on 11/29/2002 7:05:13 PM PST by bluefish
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To: bluefish
Although I think you're coming close to the exam question from hell, I think there would be a conspiracy to commit robbery in the situation you proposed.

As was mentioned on this board before, factual impossibility isn't a defense. What that basically means that even if it was factually impossible to commit the desired crime (in this case, robbing the non-existant bank), you can't use that as a defense. The only impossibility defense, and it's a slight one at that, is legal impossibility--like what you were trying to do wasn't actually a crime. Like, say, tax evasion in the Cayman's. You might think that you were committing a crime, you might have taken steps and planned your crime of tax evasion, but since tax evasion isn't a crime in the Cayman's, you can't be charged. Most judges don't understand the difference, anyway, so impossibility is pretty much a long shot to begin with.

Anyhow, there was a federal case some years back where some folks from SE Asia were convicted for attempted possession and attempted distribution of narcotics. They thought they were trying to buy heroin when they were really buying soap powder. Their convictions were upheld on appeal, and it seems the most analogus to this case. In all cases, the item necessary for the object crime to be completed (the bank, the girl, the heroin) was absent, but in the drug case, the conviction was upheld. I think the conviction would be upheld in our fictious bank robbery and assuming this guy is convicted, I think it will be upheld here, too.
55 posted on 11/29/2002 7:16:46 PM PST by Viva Le Dissention
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