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Conspiracy There are plenty of people serving many many years, often decades because they were found guilty of a conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Here's what the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin from October, 1994 has to say: "Conventional drug cases require an inordinate amount of time, personnel, and above all, money when attempting to secure a conviction for distribution. These cases go far beyond what is necessary to convict a suspect for the often-over-looked crime of conspiracy, which is simply an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime. Drug conspiracy constitutes a separate and distinct offense and does not depend on whether the subjects accomplished the conspiracy's objective -- selling drugs." This section contains the Court's treatment of the conspiracy and CCE (Continuing Criminal Enterprise) offenses.
Court Opinions on the Topic:
[T]he Court has, as a general matter only, required the prosecution to demonstrate both the unavailability of the declarant and the "indicia of reliability" surrounding the out-of-court declaration. Last Term in United States v. Inadi, 475 U.S. 387 (1986), we held that the first of these two generalized inquiries, unavailability, was not required when the hearsay statement is the out-of-court declaration of a co-conspirator. Today, we conclude that the second inquiry, independent indicia of reliability, is also not mandated by the Constitution. [...] Accordingly, we hold that the Confrontation Clause does not require a court to embark on an independent inquiry into the reliability of [co-conspirator] statements...
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...[A]ccording to the common-law view of the exemption of a co-conspirator's statement from the hearsay definition, an offering party was required to establish, as preliminary factual matters, the existence of a conspiracy and a defendant's participation therein by evidence apart from the co-conspirator's statement. [...] The Court's [...] argument in favor of abandonment of the independent-evidence rule might best be characterized as an attempt at pragmatic or "real world" analysis. The Court suggests that, while a co-conspirator's statement might be presumed unreliable when considered in isolation, it loses this unreliability when examined together with other evidence of the conspiracy and the defendant's participation in it.
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It is at least heartening, however, to see that the Court reserves the question whether a co-conspirator's statement alone, without any independent evidence, could establish the existence of a conspiracy and a defendant's participation in it. [...] If the statement alone could establish its own foundation for admissibility, a defendant could be convicted of conspiracy on the basis of an unsupported remark by an alleged conspirator...
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The quantity of drugs and cash in the car indicated the likelihood of drug dealing, an enterprise to which a dealer would be unlikely to admit an innocent person with the potential to furnish evidence against him.
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The CCE statute's breadth [...] argues against treating each individual violation as a means, for that breadth aggravates the dangers of unfairness that doing so would risk. [...] The statute's word "violations" covers many different kinds of behavior of varying degrees of seriousness. The two chapters of the Federal Criminal Code setting forth drug crimes contain approximately 90 numbered sections, many of which proscribe various acts that may be alleged as "violations" for purposes of the series requirement in the statute. Compare, e.g., 21 U.S.C. §§ 842(a)(4) and (c) (1994 ed. and Supp. III) (providing civil penalties for removing drug labels) and 21 U.S.C. § 844(a) (Supp. III) (simple possession of a controlled substance) with 21 U.S.C. § 858 (endangering human life while manufacturing a controlled substance in violation of the drug laws) and § 841(b)(1)(A) (possession with intent to distribute large quantities of drugs). At the same time, the Government in a CCE case may well seek to prove that a defendant, charged as a drug kingpin, has been involved in numerous underlying violations. The first of these considerations increases the likelihood that treating violations simply as alternative means, by permitting a jury to avoid discussion of the specific factual details of each violation, will cover-up wide disagreement among the jurors about just what the defendant did, or did not, do. The second consideration significantly aggravates the risk (present at least to a small degree whenever multiple means are at issue) that jurors, unless required to focus upon specific factual detail, will fail to do so, simply concluding from testimony, say, of bad reputation, that where there is smoke there must be fire.
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