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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 93-981
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UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v.
RESHAT SHABANI
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit
[November 1, 1994]

  Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court.
  This case asks us to consider whether 21 U. S. C.
846, the drug conspiracy statute, requires the Govern-
ment to prove that a conspirator committed an overt act
in furtherance of the conspiracy.  We conclude that it
does not.

                     I
  According to the grand jury indictment, Reshat
Shabani participated in a narcotics distribution scheme
in Anchorage, Alaska, with his girlfriend, her family,
and other associates.  Shabani was allegedly the sup-
plier of drugs, which he arranged to be smuggled from
California.  In an undercover operation, federal agents
purchased cocaine from distributors involved in the
conspiracy.
  Shabani was charged with conspiracy to distribute
cocaine in violation of 21 U. S. C. 846.  He moved to
dismiss the indictment because it did not allege the
commission of an overt act in furtherance of the conspir-
acy, which act, he argued, was an essential element of
the offense.  The United States District Court for the
District of Alaska, Hon. H. Russel Holland, denied the
motion, and the case proceeded to trial.  At the close of
evidence, Shabani again raised the issue and asked the
court to instruct the jury that proof of an overt act was
required for conviction.  The District Court noted that
Circuit precedent did not require the allegation of an
overt act in the indictment but did require proof of such
an act at trial in order to state a violation of 846.
Recognizing that such a result was -totally illogical,-
App. 29, and contrary to the language of the statute,
Judge Holland rejected Shabani's proposed jury in-
struction, id., at 36.  The jury returned a guilty ver-
dict, and the court sentenced Shabani to 160 months
imprisonment.
  The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit reversed.  993 F. 2d 1419 (1993).  The court
acknowledged an inconsistency between its cases holding
that an indictment under 846 need not allege an overt
act and those requiring proof of such an act at trial, and
it noted that the latter cases -stand on weak ground.-
993 F. 2d, at 1420.  Nevertheless, the court felt bound
by precedent and attempted to reconcile the two lines of
cases.  The Court of Appeals reasoned that, although the
Government must prove at trial that the defendant has
committed an overt act in furtherance of a narcotics
conspiracy, the act need not be alleged in the indictment
because -`[c]ourts do not require as detailed a statement
of an offense's elements under a conspiracy count as
under a substantive count.'-  Id., at 1422, quoting
United States v. Tavelman, 650 F. 2d 1133, 1137 (CA9
1981).
  Chief Judge Wallace wrote separately to point out that
in no other circumstance could the Government refrain
from alleging in the indictment an element it had to
prove at trial.  He followed the Circuit precedent but
invited the Court of Appeals to consider the question en
banc because the Ninth Circuit, -contrary to every other
circuit, clings to a problematic gloss on 21 U. S. C. 846,
insisting, despite a complete lack of textual support in
the statute, that in order to convict under this section
the government must prove the commission of an overt
act in furtherance of the conspiracy.-  993 F. 2d, at 1422
(Wallace, C. J., concurring).  For reasons unknown, the
Court of Appeals did not grant en banc review.  We
granted certiorari, 510 U. S. ___ (1994), to resolve the
conflict between the Ninth Circuit and the 11 other
Circuits that have addressed the question, all of which
have held that 846 does not require proof of an overt
act.

                    II
  Congress passed the drug conspiracy statute as 406
of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and
Control Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-513, 84 Stat. 1236.  It
provided: -Any person who attempts or conspires to
commit any offense defined in this title is punishable by
imprisonment or fine or both which may not exceed the
maximum punishment prescribed for the offense, the
commission of which was the object of the attempt or
conspiracy.-  Id., at 1265.  As amended by the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1988, Pub. L. 100-690, 6470(a), 102 Stat.
4377, the statute currently provides: -Any person who
attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in
this subchapter shall be subject to the same penalties as
those prescribed for the offense, the commission of which
was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.-  21
U. S. C. 846.  The language of neither version requires
that an overt act be committed to further the conspiracy,
and we have not inferred such a requirement from
congressional silence in other conspiracy statutes.  In
Nash v. United States, 229 U. S. 373 (1913), Justice
Holmes wrote, -[W]e can see no reason for reading into
the Sherman Act more than we find there,- id., at 378,
and the Court held that an overt act is not required for
antitrust conspiracy liability.  The same reasoning
prompted our conclusion in Singer v. United States, 323
U. S. 338 (1945), that the Selective Service Act -does not
require an overt act for the offense of conspiracy.-  Id.,
at 340.
  Nash and Singer follow the settled principle of
statutory construction that, absent contrary indications,
Congress intends to adopt the common law definition of
statutory terms.  See Molzof v. United States, 502 U. S.
301, 307-308 (1992).  We have consistently held that the
common law understanding of conspiracy -does not make
the doing of any act other than the act of conspiring a
condition of liability.- Nash, supra, at 378; see also
Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U. S. 651, 659 (1951); Bannon
v. United States, 156 U. S. 464, 468 (1895) (-At common
law it was neither necessary to aver nor prove an overt
act in furtherance of the conspiracy . . .-).  Petitioner
contends that these decisions were rendered in a period
of unfettered expansion in the law of conspiracy, a
period which allegedly ended when the Court declared
that -we will view with disfavor attempts to broaden the
already pervasive and wide-sweeping nets of conspiracy
prosecutions.-  Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S.
391, 404 (1957) (citations omitted).  Grunewald, however,
was a statute of limitations case, and whatever exasper-
ation with conspiracy prosecutions the opinion may have
expressed in dictum says little about the views of
Congress when it enacted 846.
  As to those views, we find it instructive that the
general conspiracy statute, 18 U. S. C. 371, contains an
explicit requirement that a conspirator -do any act to
effect the object of the conspiracy.-  In light of this
additional element in the general conspiracy statute,
Congress' silence in 846 speaks volumes.  After all, the
general conspiracy statute preceded and presumably
provided the framework for the more specific drug
conspiracy statute.  -Nash and Singer give Congress a
formulary: by choosing a text modeled on 371, it gets
an overt-act requirement; by choosing a text modeled on
the Sherman Act, 15  U. S. C. 1, it dispenses with such
a requirement.-  United States v. Sassi, 966 F. 2d 283,
284 (CA7 1992).  Congress appears to have made the
choice quite deliberately with respect to 846; the same
Congress that passed this provision also enacted the
Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-452,
84 Stat. 922, 802(a) of which contains an explicit
requirement that -one or more of [the conspirators] does
any act to effect the object of such a conspiracy.-  Id., at
936, codified at 18 U. S. C. 1511(a).
  Early opinions in the Ninth Circuit dealing with the
drug conspiracy statute simply relied on our precedents
interpreting the general conspiracy statute and ignored
the textual variations between the two provisions.  See
United States v. Monroe, 552 F. 2d 860, 862 (CA9), cert.
denied, 431 U. S. 972 (1977), citing United States v.
Feola, 420 U. S. 671 (1975); United States v. Thompson,
493 F. 2d 305, 310 (CA9), cert. denied, 419  U. S. 834
(1974), citing United States v. Rabinowich, 238 U. S. 78,
86-88 (1915).  Two other Courts of Appeals were led
down the same path, see United States v. King, 521
F. 2d 61, 63 (CA10 1975); United States v. Hutchinson,
488 F. 2d 484, 490 (CA8 1973), but both subsequently
recognized the misstep and rejected their early interpre-
tations, see United States v. Covos, 872 F. 2d 805, 810
(CA8 1989); United States v. Savaiano, 843 F. 2d 1280,
1294 (CA10 1988).
  What the Ninth Circuit failed to recognize we now
make explicit: In order to establish a violation of 21
U. S. C. 846, the Government need not prove the
commission of any overt acts in furtherance of the
conspiracy.  United States v. Felix, 503 U. S. ___ (1992),
is not to the contrary.  In that case, an indictment
under 846 alleged two overt acts which had formed the
basis of the defendant's prior conviction for attempting
to manufacture drugs.  The defendant argued that the
Government had violated the Double Jeopardy Clause
and Grady v. Corbin, 495 U. S. 508 (1990), overruled,
United States v. Dixon, 509 U. S. ___ (1993), by using
evidence underlying the prior conviction -to prove an
essential element of an offense- charged in the second
prosecution.  We held that the Double Jeopardy Clause
did not bar the conspiracy charge.  Justice Stevens,
writing separately, thought that our double jeopardy
discussion was unnecessary partly because -there is no
overt act requirement in the federal drug conspiracy
statute,- Felix, supra, at ___ (Stevens, J., concurring in
part and concurring in judgment).  Shabani argues that,
by not responding to this point, the Court implicitly held
that 846 requires proof of overt acts; otherwise, the
double jeopardy discussion would have been merely
advisory.  The procedural history of Felix, however,
belies this contention.  The disputed evidence was
offered not to prove overt acts qua overt acts, but to
prove the existence of a conspiracy.  The lower court in
Felix noted that it was -mindful that 21 U. S. C. 846
does not require proof of an overt act . . . .-  United
States v. Felix, 926 F. 2d 1522, 1529, n. 7 (CA10 1991).
Nevertheless, evidence of such acts raised double
jeopardy concerns because it -tended to show the
criminal agreement for the conspiracy,- an indisputably
essential element of the offense.  Ibid.  Indeed, Justice
Stevens also argued that -the overt acts did not
establish an agreement between Felix and his coconspir-
ators.-  Felix, 503 U. S., at ___.  In light of the lower
court opinion, it is apparent that we rejected this
point-rather than Justice Stevens' construction of
846-before reaching the double jeopardy issue.  In any
event, Shabani's strained reading of Felix is of little
consequence for precedential purposes, since -[q]uestions
which `merely lurk in the record' are not resolved, and
no resolution of them may be inferred.-  Illinois Bd. of
Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173, 183
(1979), quoting Webster v. Fall, 266 U. S. 507, 511
(1925).
  Shabani reminds us that the law does not punish
criminal thoughts and contends that conspiracy without
an overt act requirement violates this principle because
the offense is predominantly mental in composition.  The
prohibition against criminal conspiracy, however, does
not punish mere thought; the criminal agreement itself
is the actus reus and has been so viewed since Regina
v. Bass, 11 Mod. 55, 88 Eng. Rep. 881, 882 (K. B. 1705)
(-[T]he very assembling together was an overt act-); see
also Iannelli v. United States, 420 U. S. 770, 777 (1975)
(-Conspiracy is an inchoate offense, the essence of which
is an agreement to commit an unlawful act-) (citations
omitted).
  Finally, Shabani invokes the rule of lenity, arguing
that the statute is unclear because it neither requires an
overt act nor specifies that one is not necessary.  The
rule of lenity, however, applies only when, after consult-
ing traditional canons of statutory construction, we are
left with an ambiguous statute.  See, e.g., Beecham v.
United States, 511 U. S. ___, ___ (1994); Smith v. United
States, 508 U. S. ___, ___ (1993).  That is not the case
here.  To require that Congress explicitly state its
intention not to adopt petitioner's reading would make
the rule applicable with the -mere possibility of articu-
lating a narrower construction,- id., at ___, a result
supported by neither lenity nor logic.
  As the District Court correctly noted in this case, the
plain language of the statute and settled interpretive
principles reveal that proof of an overt act is not
required to establish a violation of 21 U. S. C. 846.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is

                                Reversed.