[sakoht]

It's a good question, though one could argue that, if you fail to hurt a person there is no "murder victim", but there is an "attempted murder victim". If you actually make the attempt. If you only "plan" to murder someone, then never go attempt to go through with your plan, I don't believe you have committed a crime. You have the cross the line of taking direct action to initiate the action. Though if you plan with others, "conspiracy" to commit a crime is itself illegal, even if you don't take other action to act on it.

The plot loophole in Minority Report is that they could have just stayed near the victim to protect him/her and waited until the perpetrator actually crossed the line of making an attempt, and arrested the person for attempted murder. Forget the whole central dilemma of the movie.

[dragonwriter]

> Though if you plan with others, "conspiracy" to commit a crime is itself illegal, even if you don't take other action to act on it.

Generally, someone (not necessarily you) must take an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy for conspiracy to be a crime.