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33 Law & Phil. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/lwphil33 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Philosophy (2014) 33: 1-40 © Springer 2012 DOI 10.1007/s10982-012-9168-8 GIDEON YAFFE INTENDING TO AID (Accepted 2 December 2012) ABSTRACT. Courts and commentators are notoriously puzzled about the mens rea standards for complicity. Accomplices intend to aid, but what attitude need they have towards the crimes that they aid? This paper both criticizes extant accounts of the mens rea of complicity and offers a new account. The paper argues that an intention can commit one to an event's occurrence without committing one to promoting the event, or making it more likely to take place. Under the proposed account of the mens rea of complicity, an accomplice must have an intention that commits him to the crime's occurrence, but need not commit him to making it more likely that the crime occurs. The paper traces the implications of this view both for several difficult complicity cases, and for ongoing debates among philosophers of action about the necessary and sufficient conditions of joint agency. I. INTRODUCTION Regno wanted some counterfeit bills. Instead of making them him- self, he bought some from Peoni. Peoni knew that Regno would either use the bills to try to buy something from some unsuspecting citizen, or else sell them to some other crook who would, in turn, either try to pass them off as real or sell them. As it happened, Regno did just what Peoni did: he sold them as counterfeit bills to Dorsey. Dorsey tried to pass them off as real, and was arrested. He was easily convictable for the crime of possession of counterfeit bills. Peoni was charged as Dorsey's accomplice in the possession. Rather than pro- ducing evidence that Peoni himself possessed the bills, that is, the United States' government produced evidence that Peoni helped Dorsey to possess them.' Peoni was convicted at trial as Dorsey's ' It is a bit unclear why the government chose this route. I suspect that they lacked evidence that Peoni had ever been in possession. Perhaps Peoni had arranged for the bills to be delivered to Regno without ever having been in possession of the bills himself. Or perhaps there was enough evidence of that possibility to generate reasonable doubt that Peoni had ever been in possession.