In People v. Swain, 12 Cal. 4th 593, 909 P.2d 994, 998 (Cal. 1996), the California Supreme Court concluded that a conspiracy to commit murder is necessarily a conspiracy to commit intent-to-kill murder. 909 P.2d at 1001. The Swain court expressly left open, however, the question of whether conspiracy to commit specific intent-to-kill second degree murder is a viable offense, and if so, the appropriate punishment. Swain, 909 P.2d at 1002-04. Confident that Cortez's appeal provided the appropriate vehicle to resolve those questions, the court "granted review to determine whether the crime of conspiracy to commit murder is divisible into degrees with differing punishments, or whether all conspiracies to commit murder are conspiracies to commit first degree murder as a matter of law." Cortez, 960 P.2d at 539.