Michigan Police Foil Teen Murder Plot
A breaking story on the news last week, as you may recall, was about three Michigan teenagers who planned to commit mass murder by shooting up two local schools in October. Officials were tipped off and the teenagers were apprehended before they could carry out their plot.
All three will be charged as adults in connection with this crime. This crime that almost happened. But didn’t actually happen.
So, you may wonder, how can the state charge the students if they didn’t actually do anything?
Well, that’s a good question.
The teens have been charged with “conspiracy.” The simplest way to explain conspiracy is to explain that if two or more persons agree to commit an illegal act and take steps complete the act they may be guilty of conspiracy to commit the act. Another way to think about it is… If two people agree to do something illegal, and they do more than just talk about it – like take some action to commit the illegal act – then they probably would have committed the crime.
Here the state will be seeking to prove that the three agreed to commit a specific act (shoot students at two specific locations). The text from phones appears to be a key piece of evidence prosecutors will use to prove that the teens agreed on what they were about to do, had some type of plan, had access to weapons, and had taken some steps in furtherance of that plan.
The defense attorneys representing the young men will attempt to disprove that there was some agreement, or that one of them – or maybe even all of them – was not intending to carry out the plan, or that there was no plan at all.
Who tipped the authorities as to a possible mass murder plan?
Could it have been one of the teens trying to back out of the plan?
It will be interesting to see just what the evidence will show.
