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I'm curious what ground you see for an appeal.
But he was convicted of conspiracy, which does not require a completed crime, nor any harm or even, in re this particular statute, an overt act (though there clearly was one here). The jury instructions are here - see page 34 et seq. And see US v. Gonzalez, 906 F. 3d 784, 792 (9th Cir 2018) [" In order to convict Gonzalez and Ayala of violating § 241 based on the first object of the charged conspiracy, the government had to prove: (1) that two or more persons agreed to deprive Carrillo of his right to be free from the use of excessive force, and (2) that Gonzalez and Ayala knowingly joined the agreement and intended to deprive Carrillo of his right to be free from the use of excessive force."].
But where is your authority for your claim that the statute requires a specific, named victim? If that were required by the statute, then the indictment would have been successfully set aside, because it didn't name a specific victim either. It says, in its entirely:
Yet there was no motion to set aside the indictment on that ground, was there?
And, I have only looked briefly, but here are some cases stating that, as a rule, no specific victim need be identified in a conspiracy prosecution:
US v. Haddy, 134 F. 3d 542 (3rd Cir 1998) [“Haddy and Wynn also argue that their convictions should be reversed because the government did not prove that investors actually relied upon fraudulent and manipulative practices in purchasing or selling the subject securities. . . . Rule 10b-5 also prohibits deceptive devices "as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors." Under this regulation, the SEC is authorized to prohibit deceptive acts that it concludes would have deleterious effect on the integrity of the securities market and on investor confidence. See 15 U.S.C. § 78b (purpose of Exchange Act is "to insure the maintenance of fair and honest markets"). This clear language obviates the necessity of identification of a specific victim who acted upon the deception.”]
US v. Tum, 707 F. 3d 68 (1st Cir. 2013) [“the Supreme Court has said in another context that the government in a conspiracy case need not prove the identity of a specific victim, unless the statute underlying the conspiracy charge so requires. See Feola, 420 U.S. at 672-73, 684, 686-93, 95 S.Ct. 1255 (affirming a conviction for conspiring to assault a federal officer even though the defendant had no idea that the victim was a federal officer). So the key to the conundrum lies in the statutory language of the act that the judge found Tum and HHCS had conspired to infract — the wire-fraud act. As we said many pages ago, the core elements of wire fraud are a scheme to defraud involving an interstate communication by wire. Conspicuously missing from this list is any requirement that the schemers know the identity of the fraud victim. The same is true for the mail-fraud statute, see 18 U.S.C. § 1341, the elements of which mirror the wire-fraud statute in relevant respects, so cases dealing with one statute are helpful in dealing with the other. See, e.g., Carpenter v. United States, 484 U.S. 19, 25 n. 6, 108 S.Ct. 316, 98 L.Ed.2d 275 (1987). Critically, 76*76 one of our mail-fraud cases flatly rejected the idea that the government is obliged to prove that the defrauders intended to defraud a specific victim, reasoning that the mail-fraud act "requires only that there be a scheme to defraud...." United States v. Royal, 100 F.3d 1019, 1030 (1st Cir.1996) (citing, most relevantly, Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 723). We see no reason for a different result in wire-fraud cases.[6] And because the fraud victim's identity is not an essential element of wire fraud, neither is it an essential element of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. See, e.g., Feola, 420 U.S. at 686, 696, 95 S.Ct. 1255 (holding that a conspiracy conviction requires proof of the same mental state as the substantive offense itself)."]
State v. Lane, NC: Court of Appeals 2011 (unreported case) ["A defendant may be convicted of conspiracy where no specific victim was targeted at the time the agreement to commit the unlawful act was made. See, e.g., State v. Roberts, 176 N.C. App. 159, 167, 625 S.E.2d 846, 852 (2006) (upholding a conspiracy conviction where the indictment stated that defendant agreed with two other people to rob "someone" that evening); State v. Dalton, 122 N.C. App. 666, 673, 471 S.E.2d 657, 662 (1996) (upholding a conspiracy conviction where defendants agreed to rape "someone," before starting their search for a specific victim)."]
Which makes a lot of sense; since a conspiracy does not require a completed crime, of course there will often not be a specific victim yet. I worked on a case once in which a client and his friend agreed to go out and kill the first black guy they met. They eventually found one, and killed him, but if they had been caught while out looking for a victim, they could not be convicted of conspiracy because there was no specific victim yet? That doesn't seem right.
A person? Sure, but the issue is whether it has to be a specific person.
Lots of laws require that the defendant intend to harm "a person." Conspiracy to murder requires that the defendants intend to murder a person, but if the language "a person" required a specific person, those defendants in the case I worked on could not have been convicted of conspiracy to murder under a general conspiracy statute, had they been arrested before finding a specific victim.
I don't believe that is the case. Were that true, if you and I conspired to deprive my neighbor of his right to vote by kidnapping him on election day, we would be innocent if it turned out he was not registered to vote, or was not a citizen. But that is a defense of factual impossibility, and factual impossibility is not a defense to conspiracy. US v. Williams, 553 US 285, 300 (2008) ["As with other inchoate crimes — attempt and conspiracy, for example — impossibility of completing the crime because the facts were not as the defendant believed is not a defense."].
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