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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9832012" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ironically, I used to be one of those hardcore prescriptivist folks. (I bet that's an absolute shocker to anyone who's known me on here for more than five minutes.) But I was sold descriptivism by prescriptivist reasoning. It was more complex than this and like fifteen years ago, so I don't remember the precise details, but it was something loosely like: "You only decline pronouns. But English had a declension system. Now it doesn't. Why is 20th c. English 'correct' grammar and (say) 6th c. English grammar 'incorrect'?" The one and only answer is that what people chose to do changed, over a long period of time. There isn't a Platonic ideal of English. There is just, to quote the infamous phrasebook, "English As She Is Spoke".But they did commit an act. They planned it out and bought the axe. That's a concrete act as part of the planning.If all you ever did was think about committing murder, but you never bought a weapon, never approached the victim, etc., then you have committed no crime. Yet, by your claimed standard, merely having the thought is enough to be guilty of attempted murder. Legally, it's bupkis. You need SOME concrete deed, even if that deed is not itself a thing.For conspiracy to commit a crime, you need proof that some kind of agreement was made, and proof that someone did something material to bring that about.You'll also note that, commensurate with the much, much lower but non-zero actus reus requirement, "conspiracy to X" charges carry lesser sentences, usually lesser even than Yes...but you also absolutely HAD to DO something.Intent, alone, without any actual deed, is not and cannot be a crime. Thoughtcrime is not a thing. Yes, intent absolutely matters and can be what clinches or derails a prosecution. But even if you could literally read a person's mind and objectively prove that they had desired to commit murder, if they never actually DO it, it's not a crime. It's a simple as that. You need a concrete act, or mens rea is irrelevant.Let's say I desire to kill someone. What crime was committed, or was there even a crime committed? Tell me without knowing the actions I performed.The argument swings both ways. Without any actual deed committed, my intent is legally meaningless. Without the correct "guilty mind", the deed is equally meaningless. Guilty act and guilty mind are individually necessary and jointly sufficient to prove legal culpability. No amount of insistence will change the fact that a guilty mind with no guilty act cannot be a crime. Even if I outrightly intended to commit a crime, as I repeatedly said.Having read the context, I don't see how it's not exactly what was meant. Negligence is still punishable, even if you never intended anything evil. Recklessness is still punishable, even if your recklessness was born from irrational exuberance, to use the pithy phrase.</blockquote>

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