## Facts

- Federal agents stopped a truck transporting illegal drugs, seized the drugs, and—using the drivers’ cooperation—conducted a sting operation to identify additional participants.
- The drivers contacted a person who arranged for someone to retrieve the truck.
- Respondents Francisco Jimenez Recio and Adrian Lopez‑Meza arrived; Recio drove away in the truck and Lopez‑Meza followed in a car.
- A federal jury convicted both respondents of conspiracy to possess and to distribute illegal drugs.
- The district court ordered a new trial because the jury had not been instructed (consistent with then-controlling Ninth Circuit precedent) that it could convict only if respondents joined the conspiracy before the government seized the drugs.
- At a second trial, the jury again convicted respondents.
- The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding the conspiracy ended when the government seizure “defeated” the conspiracy’s objective and the evidence was insufficient to show respondents joined before the seizure.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether a criminal conspiracy automatically terminates when the government, without the conspirators’ knowledge, frustrates or defeats the conspiracy’s objective (e.g., by seizing contraband), thereby barring conviction of those who join or act after the intervention.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and remanded.
- The Court held that a conspiracy does not automatically terminate merely because the government has defeated its object.
- The Court rejected the Ninth Circuit’s rule that government-caused impossibility ends a conspiracy when conspirators are unaware of the intervention.
- The Court reasoned that the conspiracy’s central wrong is the agreement and the added dangers of group criminality, which persist until abandonment, dissolution, or withdrawal.

## Legal Principles

- The agreement to commit an unlawful act is punishable even if the substantive offense does not occur.
- Government frustration of a conspiracy’s objective, unknown to the conspirators, does not itself terminate the conspiracy while participants continue the agreement and have not withdrawn.
- A conspiracy ends when its criminal purpose is achieved or the conspiratorial agreement is dissolved; limits on liability also arise through withdrawal doctrine, statutes of limitations, and proof requirements.
- Secret law-enforcement intervention that makes completion impossible does not erase conspiracy liability for later-joining participants who further the ongoing agreement.

## Conclusion

The Court held that law-enforcement actions that secretly make a conspiracy’s objective impossible do not, by themselves, end the conspiracy; liability remains so long as the conspiratorial agreement continues and has not been dissolved or abandoned, and participants have not withdrawn.


United States v. Jimenez Recio, 537 U.S. 270 (2003)