Criminal conspiracy under Texas Penal Code § 15.02 is an agreement that a felony be committed plus an overt act by any conspirator. Texas punishes conspiracy one category below the object felony. This guide covers the elements, punishment ranges, defenses, and how conspiracy cases are charged in Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant County.
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Texas Penal Code § 15.02 defines the offense in two moves. A person commits criminal conspiracy if, with intent that a felony be committed, the person (1) "agrees with one or more persons that they or one or more of them engage in conduct that would constitute the offense" and (2) "he or one or more of them performs an overt act in pursuance of the agreement." Both halves matter. Talk is not a conspiracy until somebody acts on the plan, and action is not a conspiracy unless a real agreement sits behind it.
Three features of the statute do the heavy lifting in real cases. First, the object of the agreement must be a felony — Texas has no general misdemeanor-conspiracy offense, so an agreement to commit a Class B theft cannot be charged under § 15.02 at all. Second, the overt act can come from any member of the agreement; because the statute says "he or one or more of them," the State does not have to show the defendant personally did anything beyond agreeing. Third, § 15.02(b) lets a jury infer the agreement "from acts of the parties," which is how most conspiracy cases are actually proved — through conduct, messages, and money movement rather than a recorded handshake.
Subsection (c) then strips away five intuitive-sounding defenses. It is no defense to a conspiracy prosecution that a co-conspirator is not criminally responsible for the object offense, has been acquitted (so long as two or more co-conspirators have not been acquitted), has never been prosecuted or was convicted of a different offense, is immune, or was legally incapable of committing the object offense individually. The fifth one surprises people most: it is no defense "that the object offense was actually committed." Finishing the crime does not erase the conspiracy.
A hypothetical shows how little it takes. Two men agree over dinner in Frisco to break into a McKinney warehouse, and one of them buys bolt cutters the next morning. The burglary never happens — the conspiracy charge is already complete. The agreement supplies the first element, the bolt-cutter purchase supplies the overt act, and the object crime never needs to occur.
To convict under § 15.02, the State must prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt:
Section 15.02(d) sets a single grading rule: the conspiracy is "one category lower than the most serious felony that is the object of the conspiracy," and if that object is a state jail felony, the conspiracy is a Class A misdemeanor. The table below applies the rule across the felony ladder using the punishment ranges in Penal Code Chapter 12.
| Object of the conspiracy | Conspiracy classification | Confinement range | Maximum fine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital felony | First-degree felony | 5–99 years or life in prison | $10,000 |
| First-degree felony | Second-degree felony | 2–20 years in prison | $10,000 |
| Second-degree felony | Third-degree felony | 2–10 years in prison | $10,000 |
| Third-degree felony | State jail felony | 180 days–2 years in state jail | $10,000 |
| State jail felony | Class A misdemeanor | Up to 1 year in county jail | $4,000 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-06-11 | ||
Two wrinkles modify the grade-down rule. The 88th Legislature amended § 15.02(d) in 2023 to carve out terrorism: when the object of the conspiracy is a terrorism offense under Penal Code § 76.02, the one-category reduction does not apply. And the reduction can run the other way at sentencing — under § 15.04(d), a defendant who proves renunciation as mitigation at the punishment hearing receives a punishment one grade lower than the conspiracy itself.
Almost never with a written pact. Section 15.02(b) expressly allows the agreement to be "inferred from acts of the parties," so prosecutors build conspiracy cases from circumstantial mosaics: text threads and direct messages, call-detail records showing coordinated timing, cash deposits and peer-to-peer transfers, jointly rented vehicles or storage units, surveillance putting the same people at planning locations, and the testimony of a member who flipped.
The agreement still has to be real on both ends. In Williams v. State, 646 S.W.2d 221 (Tex. Crim. App. 1983), the State's only alleged co-conspirator was a police informant who cultivated the defendant at law enforcement's request and feigned his assent to a kidnapping-for-ransom plan. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and rendered an acquittal: there was no meeting of the minds between the alleged co-conspirators, and without an "actual, positive agreement" between at least two genuine participants there is no conspiracy. That bilateral-agreement rule remains a structural weakness in sting-driven § 15.02 prosecutions where the only counterpart was working for the government.
Two evidence rules shape nearly every trial. Under Texas Rule of Evidence 801(e)(2)(E), a statement by a co-conspirator made during and in furtherance of the conspiracy is not hearsay — what one alleged partner told someone else can come into evidence against the defendant. Pulling the other way, the accomplice-witness rule of Code of Criminal Procedure art. 38.14 bars a conviction on an accomplice's testimony unless other evidence tends to connect the defendant to the offense. When the State's case is one cooperating co-defendant plus inference, corroboration is where the case gets tested.
L and L Law Group builds conspiracy defenses around the statute's own pressure points:
Dismissals in conspiracy cases tend to come from structural weaknesses rather than sympathy. Felony conspiracy charges must survive the grand jury, and agreement evidence that looks thin on paper — one cooperating witness, ambiguous texts, no overt act tied to the defendant — can draw a no-bill. After indictment, suppression of phone evidence or the collapse of a cooperating co-defendant's credibility often drives a reduction or dismissal before trial.
Conspiracy is also generally eligible for deferred adjudication under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 42A, which matters later: a deferred that is successfully discharged can support an order of nondisclosure under Government Code § 411.072 or § 411.0725, subject to the waiting periods and disqualifiers in Government Code chapter 411. An acquittal or a dismissal without conviction can support full expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 55A. A final conviction forecloses expunction, which is one more reason the deferred-versus-conviction decision deserves real analysis — see our deferred adjudication and nondisclosure guide.
Section 15.02 is an offense; Penal Code § 7.02(b) is a liability theory — and confusing the two obscures what a defendant is actually facing. A § 15.02 charge punishes the agreement itself, one category below the object felony. Section 7.02(b) does something different: when conspirators set out to commit one felony and a member commits another felony along the way, it makes every conspirator guilty of the felony actually committed.
The Court of Criminal Appeals laid out the conditions in Ex Parte Thompson, 179 S.W.3d 549 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005): a person may be found guilty of a felony actually committed by another if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators in furtherance of the unlawful purpose, and the felony was one that "should have been anticipated" as a result of carrying out the conspiracy — even though the defendant had no intent to commit it. In Thompson itself, the theory supported a capital murder conviction for a defendant whose agreed-upon crime was an aggravated robbery.
Notice what § 7.02(b) does to the grade: it imposes liability for the full felony actually committed, with no one-category reduction. That asymmetry drives charging strategy. When the object crime was completed, prosecutors usually skip § 15.02 and indict the completed felony, using § 7.02(b) to sweep in everyone who joined the underlying agreement. The standalone conspiracy charge appears most often when the plan was interrupted — stings, intercepted plots, an aggravated robbery that never came off. Identifying which theory the State has chosen is one of the first jobs in the defense.
A second hypothetical makes the stakes concrete. A driver agrees only to drop two acquaintances at a house they plan to burglarize and wait outside. Inside, one of them pistol-whips the homeowner. Under § 7.02(b), the driver's exposure is no longer conspiracy to commit burglary — the question becomes whether a robbery or assault "should have been anticipated" from the burglary agreement, and the State will argue the full grade of the violence that actually happened.
North Texas conspiracy investigations frequently end up federal, and the two systems run on different rules. The general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, requires by its text that a conspirator "do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy" and caps punishment at five years for most objects. Federal drug conspiracy is harsher on both counts: 21 U.S.C. § 846 carries the same penalties as the object offense, and in United States v. Shabani, 513 U.S. 10 (1994), the Supreme Court held that to establish a § 846 violation "the Government need not prove the commission of any overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy."
| Feature | Texas § 15.02 | 18 U.S.C. § 371 | 21 U.S.C. § 846 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overt act required | Yes, by any conspirator | Yes, by statutory text | No (Shabani) |
| Punishment | One category below object felony | Up to 5 years for felony objects | Same as the object offense |
| Misdemeanor objects | Not chargeable; felony objects only | Chargeable, capped at misdemeanor max | Drug offenses per the CSA |
The practical takeaway runs in both directions. A Texas charge gives the defense an overt-act element and a one-grade discount that simply do not exist in a federal drug-conspiracy indictment, while a federal case adds sentencing guidelines, relevant-conduct drug-weight math, and detention-hearing dynamics that have no state analogue. Cases that start with a Collin or Dallas County arrest can be adopted by federal prosecutors in the Eastern or Northern District of Texas when wiretaps, multi-county distribution, or fraud-loss amounts draw their attention. Our federal conspiracy defense and federal drug conspiracy pages cover that side of the line, and the federal charges hub maps the whole landscape.
Chapter 15 contains the three preparatory offenses, and prosecutors choose among them — and their organized-crime cousin — based on what the evidence shows:
Put the grading rules side by side and the charging stakes get vivid: the same alleged plan can surface as a § 15.02 conspiracy (one category down), as the completed object felony through § 7.02(b) (full grade), or as EOCA (one category up). Three statutes, three exposure levels, one set of facts — which is why the indictment's theory deserves as much scrutiny as the evidence. Financial-crime overlays such as money laundering and state racketeering add further charging routes when proceeds move.
Felony conspiracy cases are indicted by a grand jury and heard in the district courts; the Class A misdemeanor version (state-jail-felony object) is filed in the county criminal courts. Where your case lands depends on where the agreement or any overt act occurred.
Collin County. Felony conspiracy cases proceed through the Collin County grand jury and the district courts at the Collin County Courthouse, 2100 Bloomdale Road in McKinney. Multi-defendant indictments are common in Collin County drug and fraud cases, which means co-defendant counsel coordination — and the timing of any co-defendant's plea — shapes strategy from the first setting. We defend Collin County conspiracy cases from our Frisco office a short drive down Preston Road.
Dallas County. Felony dockets run at the Frank Crowley Courts Building on Riverfront Boulevard. Dallas conspiracy prosecutions often arrive with wiretap or pole-camera components and a parallel federal interest, so an early question in every Frank Crowley conspiracy case is whether the file will stay state or be adopted federally.
Denton County. Cases are heard at the Denton County Courts Building in Denton. Conspiracy counts in Denton County frequently ride alongside delivery or theft indictments as the State's fallback theory, which creates plea leverage worth testing against the actual agreement evidence.
Tarrant County. Felony cases are tried at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth. As in the other counties, the practical defense work is the same: isolate what the State can prove about your client's own agreement, not the group's conduct.
The procedural spine matches any felony case, with conspiracy-specific pressure points along the way:
Because most conspiracy convictions are felonies, the after-effects track felony consequences generally. A felony conviction restricts firearm possession under Penal Code § 46.04 and triggers the separate lifetime federal bar of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) — see our felon in possession page for how the two regimes interact. Licensing boards evaluate felony convictions under Occupations Code chapter 53, and conspiracy's link to an object offense matters there: a conspiracy tied to fraud reads very differently to a nursing or teaching board than the bare word "conspiracy" suggests. Immigration law generally treats a conspiracy the same as its object offense, so noncitizens need object-offense-specific advice before any plea. And even the Class A misdemeanor version leaves a permanent record visible to employers and landlords unless and until a nondisclosure order issues.
Co-Founding Partner · Texas Bar No. 24043514
Reggie London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on federal criminal defense, complex felony defense, and TEA/SBEC matters. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Co-Founding Partner · Texas Bar No. 24043266
Njeri London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on DWI defense, family violence cases, and juvenile defense. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Co-founding partners Reggie London and Njeri London personally handle every case. Free consultation. Frisco, Texas.
Call (972) 370-5060L&L Law Group represents clients across North Texas counties for DWI, assault, drug crimes, juvenile defense, outstanding warrants, bond reduction, and expunction matters.
