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:
“England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature—for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)