The doctrine of common purpose, common design or joint enterprise is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions which imputes criminal liability on the participants to a criminal enterprise for all that results from that enterprise. A common incidence of the application of the rule is to impute criminal liability for assaulting a person with a knife, on all the participants to a riot who knew, or were reckless as to knowing, that one of their number had a knife and might use it, even when the imputed participants did not actually have knives themselves.
Read more about Common Purpose: Explanation, Deliberate Departure, When The Outcome Is Death, Repentance
Famous quotes containing the words common and/or purpose:
“Yours are no common feet.
The lawyer don’t know what it is he’s buying:
So many miles you might have walked you won’t walk.
You haven’t run your forty orchids down.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit’s breath. A just man’s purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)