Q: What offenses could the people be charged with?
I have a hypothetical scenario of three people who are apart of an organization that find stolen artifacts and are tasked to retrieve those items. They had done some research and found that there were possible stolen artifacts in a museum. They informed the leader of the organization and immediately started making plans of getting to the museum by purchasing a plane ticket, rental car, found a map of the museum online, and pictures of the possible stolen artifacts. While on the way to the airport they are stopped by police. The police department had received an anonymous tip that three members of an organization were traveling to burglarize a museum.
A: This is like a law school essay. The only possible charge might be conspiracy, but the evidence is way too thin for a conviction and even a probable cause hearing. The anonymous tip is not enough on its own without some corroborating evidence. The only way the prosecution might get there is if one of the three people chose to flip not he other two and claim that they were planning to commit a crime when they arrived in the city with the artifacts. There is also a problem with jurisdiction and venue since the potential crime would have been in an entirely different jurisdiction and venue.
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