By the The Bulldog Law Criminal Defense Team • Reviewed by a licensed California criminal defense attorney
Penal Code § 653f makes the REQUEST itself a crime: soliciting asking, urging, encouraging another person to commit a specified offense, with intent that it actually be committed, is complete THE MOMENT THE ASK IS MADE: no agreement, no act, no willingness by the other person required. Soliciting murder is a straight felony carrying 3, 6, or 9 years; soliciting the listed felonies (robbery, kidnapping, arson, extortion, forcible sex offenses, and others) carries its own felony and wobbler tiers. But the statute travels with two built-in defense doors most people never hear about: California requires proof by TWO witnesses or one witness plus corroborating circumstances and the intent element separates genuine solicitation from the angry venting, dark jokes, and hyperbole that generate so many of these cases. (Different statute entirely: soliciting PROSTITUTION is the § 647(b) misdemeanor covered in the firm's prostitution-law guide.) This guide from The Bulldog Law's criminal defense team covers the real § 653f: elements, penalties, the sting-and-informant patterns, and the defenses.
The Elements and the Two-Witness Rule
- The solicitation a request, urging, or encouragement directed at another person to commit one of the statute's specified crimes; the medium doesn't matter (spoken, texted, posted, relayed).
- Specific intent that the crime BE COMMITTED the load-bearing element: the speaker must actually want the offense carried out. Venting, bravado, gallows humor, and rhetorical rage (“somebody should burn that place down”) fail it and most contested cases live exactly here.
- Corroboration the procedural shield: § 653f convictions require the testimony of two witnesses, or one witness plus corroborating circumstances. A single accuser's uncorroborated claim the jailhouse cellmate, the vengeful ex is legally insufficient, and holding the prosecution to this rule wins cases before trial.
What completes the crime is the ask with intent the other person's refusal, laughter, or report to police changes nothing about liability. What the crime does NOT require is exactly what its neighbor does: conspiracy (§ 182) needs an AGREEMENT plus an overt act; solicitation is one-directional. The prosecutorial pattern follows: if the solicited person says yes, both solicitation and conspiracy get charged; if the ‘yes' came from an undercover officer, solicitation stands alone with entrapment now in play.
Penalties by Target Crime
- Solicitation of murder (§ 653f(b)) straight felony: 3, 6, or 9 years the murder-for-hire charge, and the version behind most headlines and stings. (The solicited murder itself, if anyone acts, escalates everything into homicide liability.)
- The specified-felony list (§ 653f(a), (c)) soliciting robbery, burglary, grand theft, extortion, kidnapping, arson, perjury, assault with a deadly weapon, and forcible sex offenses carries felony and wobbler exposure keyed to the target crime's gravity with forcible sex-offense solicitation treated among the most serious.
- The stacking reality solicitation counts arrive WITH their neighbors: conspiracy when agreement is alleged, criminal threats (§ 422) when the words were aimed AT the target rather than at a recruit, and attempt where steps were taken. Sorting angry words into the correct statute or out of all of them is the first defense project, because the same sentence spoken in rage supports three different charges or none.
How These Cases Are Really Made: Stings, Informants, and Screenshots
Three factory patterns produce § 653f files. THE FAKE HITMAN: undercover officers (or informants introducing them) pose as available killers in divorce, custody, business, and jail settings the recordings are the case, and the defense questions are entrapment's: who raised the idea, who supplied the persistence and the price, and whether a law-abiding person in the defendant's crisis would have been induced. THE JAILHOUSE INFORMANT: a cellmate reports that the defendant solicited harm to a witness testimony purchased with leniency, aimed at the corroboration rule's exact weakness, and met with informant-benefit discovery and the two-witness requirement. THE SCREENSHOT CASE: rage texts and posts (“I'll pay anyone who…”) forwarded to police where context, hyperbole, audience, and the absence of any real arrangement carry the intent defense. Across all three, the constants: complete recordings and threads (never the excerpts), the accuser's motives on full display, and the standard weak-case pressure points because a crime made entirely of words inherits every ambiguity words carry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you be charged for just ASKING someone to commit a crime?
Yes that's precisely what § 653f criminalizes: the solicitation is complete when the request is made with intent that the crime occur, regardless of whether the other person refuses, laughs, or calls the police. No agreement or action is required that's what separates it from conspiracy. The safeguards are the intent element (genuine desire that the crime happen, not venting) and the corroboration rule (two witnesses, or one plus corroborating circumstances). If you've been accused over words especially words reported by one motivated person those two doctrines are where your defense begins.
What's the sentence for solicitation of murder?
Three, six, or nine years in state prison § 653f(b) is a straight felony with no misdemeanor option, and it applies even when the ‘hitman' was an undercover officer and no danger ever existed. Related exposure stacks fast: an actual agreement adds conspiracy to commit murder (punished as first-degree murder 25-to-life), and any step toward the killing brings attempt liability. These cases are defended on entrapment (who authored and pushed the plot), intent (desperation talk versus a real directive), and the recordings in full and they are defended immediately, before any statement is given.
I said something horrible in anger is that solicitation?
Anger alone, no solicitation requires specific intent that the crime actually be committed, and courts distinguish genuine directives from hyperbole, venting, and dark humor: ‘I could kill him' to a friend is not § 653f. What moves words toward the statute: specificity (target, method, payment), persistence, steps taken (money gathered, information provided), and a real audience being recruited. What protects you now: stop talking about it to anyone, don't delete anything (deletion reads as consciousness of guilt), and get counsel before explaining context to police the explanation, not the original words, convicts most people in these cases.
What's the difference between solicitation and conspiracy?
Direction versus agreement. Solicitation (§ 653f) is one-way: your ask, complete on delivery, no acceptance needed. Conspiracy (§ 182) is mutual: an agreement between two or more plus an overt act and it borrows the target felony's full punishment. The charging logic: refusal or an undercover ‘yes' leaves solicitation alone; a genuine yes adds conspiracy; steps toward the crime add attempt. The defense logic mirrors it attack the intent and corroboration on the solicitation, the agreement and overt act on the conspiracy, and the informant's deal underneath both. Our complete conspiracy guide covers the § 182 side.
Section 653f prosecutes words which means every case is a fight about meaning, intent, and who's telling the story. Hold the state to the corroboration rule, put the whole recording in front of the jury, and make ‘wanted it done' something they must prove, not assume. The Bulldog Law's criminal defense team defends solicitation, conspiracy, and threat cases across California. Contact the firm online or call (888) 928-1609 free and confidential.