18 USC § 2 - Principals

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Current through Pub. L. 113-99. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.

(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

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(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.

(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

Source

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 684; Oct. 31, 1951, ch. 655, § 17b,65 Stat. 717.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., § 550 (Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 321, § 332,35 Stat. 1152).

Section 2 (a) comprises section 550 of title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., without change except in minor matters of phraseology.

Section 2 (b) is added to permit the deletion from many sections throughout the revision of such phrases as “causes or procures”.

The section as revised makes clear the legislative intent to punish as a principal not only one who directly commits an offense and one who “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” another to commit an offense, but also anyone who causes the doing of an act which if done by him directly would render him guilty of an offense against the United States.

It removes all doubt that one who puts in motion or assists in the illegal enterprise but causes the commission of an indispensable element of the offense by an innocent agent or instrumentality, is guilty as a principal even though he intentionally refrained from the direct act constituting the completed offense.

This accords with the following decisions: Rothenburg v. United States, 1918, 38 S. Ct. 18, 245 U.S. 480, 62 L. Ed. 414, and United States v. Hodorowicz, C. C. A. Ill. 1939, 105 F. 2d 218, certiorari denied, 60 S. Ct. 108, 308 U.S. 584, 84 L. Ed. 489. United States v. Giles, 1937, 57 S. Ct. 340, 300 U.S. 41, 81 L. Ed. 493, rehearing denied, 57 S. Ct. 505, 300 U.S. 687, 81 L. Ed. 888.

Amendments

1951—Subsec. (a). Act Oct. 31, 1951, inserted “punishable as”.

Subsec. (b). Act Oct. 31, 1951, inserted “willfully” before “causes”, and “or another” after “him”, and substituted “is punishable as a principal” for “is also a principal and punishable as such”.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Friday, May 3, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

18 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

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18 USC § 2 - Principals

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