Definition
A person who, with full knowledge that a felony has been committed by another, voluntarily assists, harbors, conceals, or relieves the offender—after the crime is complete—with the intent to help that person escape arrest, trial, or punishment. The accessary after the fact takes no part in the original offense; the criminal liability attaches entirely to conduct following the completed crime.
Three conditions must be satisfied: (1) a felony must actually have been committed; (2) the accessary must have actual knowledge of that felony; and (3) the accessary must render assistance or comfort to the offender with the intent to help them evade justice.
Common Language
Wiktionary: Alternative spelling of accessory after the fact.
Webster's 1913: [No substantive entry for this phrase; "accessary" appears as an archaic variant spelling of "accessory," defined generally as one who aids or contributes in a secondary capacity.]
The everyday word "accessory" suggests a minor or supplemental role, which roughly tracks the legal meaning. The gap worth noting is one of precision: in law, the timing of the assistance is definitional. A person who helps before or during the crime is not an accessary after the fact—they fall under entirely different liability. Common usage carries no such temporal boundary.
Common Confusion
ACCESSARY AFTER THE FACT vs. ACCESSARY BEFORE THE FACT: An accessary before the fact counsels, procures, or commands a felony but is absent when it is committed. An accessary after the fact plays no role in the original offense and intervenes only once it is completed. In many modern codes, accessaries before the fact are treated as principals; accessaries after the fact are not, and typically face reduced exposure.
ACCESSARY AFTER THE FACT vs. PRINCIPAL: A principal is present at the commission of the offense (first degree) or aids and abets while constructively present (second degree). The accessary after the fact is never a principal. This distinction, historically rigid at common law, directly controls which charges may be brought and what penalties apply.
ACCESSARY AFTER THE FACT vs. OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE / HARBORING: Modern statutes frequently replace the common law accessary-after-the-fact framework with specific offenses—harboring a fugitive, aiding escape, obstruction of justice, or compounding a crime. Researchers moving between historical and modern sources will find these terms doing overlapping work, but they are not interchangeable in either elements or penalty.
Why It Matters in Research
The spelling is the first trap. "Accessary" (with an "a") is the dominant spelling in English common law sources and in the older American legal dictionaries. "Accessory" (with an "o") increasingly displaces it through the nineteenth century and is standard in virtually all modern statutes and cases. Searching historical databases with only the modern spelling will miss significant material.
The common law category of accessary after the fact applied only to felonies, not misdemeanors—a limitation that appears consistently in historical sources and shapes how courts analyzed the doctrine. Researchers working with pre-codification materials must keep this felony-only boundary in mind; it is easy to miss in secondary summaries that describe the doctrine in broad terms.
Modern American jurisdictions have largely absorbed the concept into statutory frameworks. The Model Penal Code approach, for instance, treats post-crime assistance under distinct provisions rather than preserving the common law accessary structure. When tracing how a specific jurisdiction handles post-crime assistance, researchers should identify whether the state retains common law accessary terminology or has substituted a modern statutory analog—the answer changes the applicable case law and elements entirely.
Burrill's entry contains an unrelated intrusion about specificatio (the Roman law doctrine of specification), which appears to be a printing artifact from an adjacent entry. Researchers consulting digitized versions of Burrill should be alert to such truncations and bleed-through text.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's converge on the core definition: knowledge of a completed felony, followed by voluntary assistance to the offender. Black's frames the knowledge requirement in terms of concealment from magistrates and emphasizes protection of "the person charged with, or convicted of" the crime, which helpfully extends the doctrine past arrest to the post-conviction stage. Burrill's formulation—"receives, relieves, comforts or assists"—echoes the older English common law language and aligns with Hale and Blackstone's treatment of the category.
Neither source addresses the modern statutory displacement of the doctrine with any detail, which is expected given their publication periods. Both treat the felony limitation as self-evident and do not analyze its policy rationale. Neither discusses the position of a spouse as accessary after the fact, though the common law recognized a marital exception that many jurisdictions preserved well into the twentieth century—a significant omission for researchers working with historical cases involving family members of offenders.
Jurisdictional Note
Common law states historically recognized the accessary-after-the-fact category as distinct from principal liability and imposed lower maximum penalties accordingly. Many modern U.S. jurisdictions have codified this as a separate statutory offense—often titled "hindering prosecution" or "accessory after the fact"—while others fold the conduct into general obstruction or harboring statutes. The elements and penalties vary enough that jurisdiction-specific research is essential before drawing analogies across sources.