| Court: | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
| Facts: | Sample worked at the Waukesha County Jail, and he'd sometimes help inmates smuggle in drugs. Eventually someone told on him, and a sting was set up. He picked up a package from an undercover officer and was going to deliver it. So they arrested him. |
| Posture: | Convicted at trial in spite of many motions suggesting that the conspiracy law didn't pertain to this situation. |
| Issue: | Does the WI statute on conspiracy contemplate unilateral conspiracies? |
| Holding: | Yes. Affirmed. |
| Rule: | Conspiracy requires intent and membership in a group with a mutual understanding to accomplish a common criminal objective. |
| Reasoning: | This is a new issue of statutory interpretation: we must determine the intent of the legislature. We focus first on the plain language of the statute. If that's ambiguous, look at other things. The theory that "whoever" is necessarily plural is not persuasive. If this only applied to bilateral conspiracies, then a person's guilt or innocence would depend in part on another person's state of mind. Clearly, then, unilateral conspiracies are included. |
| Dicta: | |