18 U.S.C. § 956

18 U.S.C. § 956, titled "Conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country," prohibits certain violent conspiracies targeting people or property outside the United States when formed and carried out in part within U.S. jurisdiction. Subsection (a) is the operative provision for the terrorism material support charge in United States v. Martin, where it serves as the predicate offense under 18 U.S.C. § 2339A.

Elements of 956(a)

Section 956(a) requires the government to prove:

1. A conspiracy, formed within U.S. jurisdiction, to commit murder, kidnapping, or maiming;
2. Targeting a person or persons located outside the United States;
3. An overt act by one or more conspirators committed within the United States in furtherance of the conspiracy.

The statute does not require that the intended victim be a foreign national, only that the planned harm be directed at a person located abroad. It applies where the United States is at peace with the country where the target is located.¹

Penalties

• Conspiracy to murder: imprisonment for any term of years or for life
• Conspiracy to maim: up to 35 years
• Conspiracy to damage or destroy foreign government or public property (subsection b): up to 25 years

Application to Self-Directed Violence

The central legal question in the Baron Cain Martin prosecution is whether 956(a)'s prohibition on conspiracy to "kill" or "maim" extends to a scenario in which the perpetrator directs a victim to inflict the lethal or serious physical harm on herself, rather than acting directly or through a third-party agent. The government's theory is that coercing a psychologically vulnerable overseas minor into self-harm, self-maiming, or suicide constitutes a conspiracy to "kill or maim" within the meaning of the statute.

No published Ninth Circuit precedent directly addresses this question in the context of coerced self-harm. Defense counsel in the Martin case would potentially argue that "conspiracy to kill or maim" requires an agreement to have a third party perform the act of killing or maiming, and that directed self-harm falls outside the statute's scope. As of May 2026, no defense motion challenging the terrorism charge on these grounds has appeared in public docket summaries.²

Role as 2339A Predicate

The foreign-country requirement of 956(a) is what enables its use as a 2339A predicate in network prosecution contexts. Because 764 and its successor networks operate transnationally, with victims in dozens of countries, the government can generally identify at least one victim located outside the United States in any given leadership prosecution. This makes the 956(a)/2339A combination structurally available against senior 764 operators regardless of where they personally reside.

In the Martin indictment, the specific predicate episode involves Victim 7 (not publicly identified), who was located overseas and was allegedly directed by Martin and co-conspirators in September 2022 to self-harm, self-maim, and die by suicide.³

Relation to Conspiracy to Conspire Problem

Because 18 U.S.C. § 2339A has its own embedded conspiracy provision, charging a conspiracy to provide material support in furtherance of what is itself a conspiracy under 956(a) does not constitute an impermissible "conspiracy to conspire." This point was addressed in the Congressional Research Service analysis of the 2339A/2339B statutes and is relied upon in the Baumgartner/Jonas Just Security analysis of the Martin prosecution.⁴