THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Did you answer the President with respect to the question of whether the conspirators joining later became responsible? If that were true, then this defendant would be responsible for acts running back to 1921.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: There are two legal conceptions which have to be borne in mind in considering that point. I can only speak with knowledge on the law of England, but I understand that the law of the United States is very much the same.
In England there is a common law offense of conspiracy. There are also certain statutory offenses, but there is a common law offense of conspiracy. The gist of that offense is, as I have already stated, entering into an agreement to commit an illegal act or a legal act by illegal means. As far as a conviction for conspiracy per se is concerned, there is no doubt about the law of England. If someone joins a conspiracy at a late state, a conspiracy to do any illegal act, he can be convicted of conspiracy to do that act however late he joins.
The usual analogy, with which I am sure the learned American Judge is familiar, is that of a stage play. The fact that a character does not come in until Act 3 does not mean that he is any the less carrying out the design of the author of the play to present the whole picture which the play embraces. It is a very useful analogy because it shows the position. That is one aspect of the law, and on that there is no doubt at all.
The other aspect of the law is as to how far those who act in consort to commit a crime are responsible for each other’s acts, that is, irrespective of the substantive offense of conspiracy. If one may take an example—a highly fantastic one but I think it raises the point—assume that you had a conspiracy on the part of road operators to wreck railway trains, and a number of road operators agreed in December to wreck a train on the 1st of January and to wreck a further train on the 1st of February. Between the 1st of January and the 1st of February, another road operator joins the conspiracy. I hope I have got rightly the point in My Lord’s mind and in the mind of the learned American Judge. Then there is, as far as I can see, some doubt as to whether that road operator would be liable for a murder committed in the wrecking that took place on the first of January.