⚡ 10-Second Rule
If you truly meant to commit a crime and got close enough to doing it, the try itself is a crime.
🧒 ELI-10 Scene
Leo wants the cookies his mom hid on the top shelf. Just wanting them isn't breaking the rule. Walking into the kitchen isn't either. But then Leo drags a chair to the counter, climbs up, and stretches his hand toward the jar. Mom walks in before he touches a single cookie. Is Leo innocent because he never got one? No way. He planned it, and he climbed most of the way there. The climb is what gets him grounded.
⚖️ Actual Rule
Attempt requires (1) the specific intent to commit the target offense and (2) an act beyond mere preparation. Attempt is always a specific-intent crime, even when the completed offense is not, so there is no attempt to commit a purely reckless crime. On the act element, the traditional common-law proximity test asked whether the defendant came dangerously close to completing the crime; the Model Penal Code § 5.01, adopted by a majority of modern codes, instead requires a substantial step that strongly corroborates the defendant's criminal purpose (paraphrased). Factual impossibility — the crime could not succeed for reasons the defendant did not know — is no defense; true legal impossibility — the thing the defendant set out to do is not a crime at all — is a complete defense. At common law, abandonment after the attempt is complete is no defense; the MPC § 5.01(4) recognizes a complete and voluntary renunciation as an affirmative defense (paraphrased). [NJ-VARIANT: flagged for future Eli Explains NJ Law module] Attempt merges into the completed offense, so a defendant cannot be convicted of both the attempt and the finished crime.
ELI-10 translation: meaning it plus moving close enough equals guilt, even if the crime never happens.
🔍 Ask These Questions
- Did the defendant have specific intent to bring about the completed crime? (Did this person truly want the crime to happen, not just act carelessly?)
- Did the conduct pass mere preparation — dangerously close under the proximity test, or a substantial step under the MPC? (Did they move from planning into really doing?)
- Does the act strongly corroborate the criminal purpose? (Would a stranger watching say, "That person is clearly going for it"?)
- Is the claimed defense factual impossibility — hidden facts made success impossible? (A blocked path does not erase the try.)
- Is it true legal impossibility — the intended act was never a crime? (You can't attempt something the law never banned.)
- Did the defendant abandon the plan, and does the jurisdiction even allow that defense? (Quitting only helps in MPC-style places, and only if it's a full, honest quit.)
- Was the crime completed? (If yes, the attempt folds into the finished crime — charge one, not both.)
⚠️ Bar Trap
Exam language: Examiners build fact patterns where success was physically impossible — an unloaded gun, an empty pocket, a harmless powder sold as poison — and offer "impossibility" as an exonerating answer choice. Factual impossibility is never a defense to attempt; only true legal impossibility, where the intended objective is not criminal at all, defeats liability.
ELI-10: A blocked plan is still a punished plan. The only escape is when the thing you wanted to do was never against the law.
🧪 Question
A nephew, the sole heir of his wealthy uncle, decided to kill the uncle to accelerate his inheritance. He purchased a tin of rat poison, believing its contents were lethal to humans. Unknown to him, a manufacturing defect had rendered the batch chemically inert and incapable of harming anyone. That evening, the nephew stirred a large dose into the uncle's whiskey decanter. The uncle drank two glasses and suffered no ill effects. The nephew was charged with attempted murder in a jurisdiction following the majority approach to inchoate offenses.
Should the nephew be convicted?
(A) Yes, because factual impossibility is not a defense to attempt. (B) Yes, because his murderous intent alone is sufficient to establish attempt. (C) No, because the inert poison made it impossible for his conduct to kill anyone. (D) No, because the crime of murder was never completed.
Answer: (A). The nephew specifically intended to kill and took a substantial step strongly corroborating that purpose by dosing the decanter. That hidden facts doomed the plan is classic factual impossibility, which no jurisdiction accepts as a defense to attempt.
💡 Why the Wrong Answers Are Wrong
- (B) states the right result on the wrong ground; intent alone is never enough — attempt also requires an act beyond mere preparation.
- (C) is the factual-impossibility trap; the defense fails whenever the crime would have occurred had the facts been as the defendant believed.
- (D) confuses attempt with the completed offense; attempt exists precisely because the crime was not completed.
- ELI-10: The misconception is thinking a failed plan is a free plan. Courts punish the serious try, not just the finish line.
