Case Name: STATE of Louisiana v. Dewayne E. ARNOLD
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1989-09-12
Citations: 548 So. 2d 920
Docket Number: No. 88-K-2603
Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Dewayne E. ARNOLD.
Judges: LEMMON, J., concurs and assigns reasons.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 548
Pages: 920–930

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana v. Dewayne E. ARNOLD.
No. 88-K-2603.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Sept. 12, 1989.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., James Norris, Jr., Dist. Atty., Kathy McCoy, Asst. Dist. Atty., for applicant.
Elijah Young, for respondent.

Opinion:
COLE, Justice.
Defendant Dewayne Arnold was found guilty by a jury of attempted aggravated rape, aggravated crime against nature, attempted second degree murder and aggravated kidnapping. He was sentenced to twenty years at hard labor for the attempted aggravated rape, fifteen years at hard labor for the aggravated crime against nature, twenty years at hard labor for the attempted second degree murder, and life imprisonment for the aggravated kidnapping. The sentences were ordered served without the benefit of probation, parole or suspension, and all the sentences were to be served concurrently, except for the aggravated kidnapping sentence, which was to be served consecutively to the others.
Defendant appealed, arguing the evidence did not support his conviction for aggravated kidnapping and further contending that his sentence was excessive. The court of appeal found the evidence insufficient to support a conviction for aggravated kidnapping. However, the court found the evidence supported a conviction for simple kidnapping and remanded for resentencing. The court affirmed all other convictions and sentences. 535 So.2d 937 (La.App. 2d Cir.1988).
We granted the state's application for writs in order to consider the correctness of this decision. 538 So.2d 580 (La.1989). For the reasons hereafter set forth, we affirm in part and reverse in part.
FACTS
In the early evening hours of February 24, 1987, defendant approached the twenty year old female victim in a grocery store parking lot in Monroe, Louisiana. As the victim attempted to unlock the door of her truck, defendant grabbed her by the hair, ordered her into the truck and got in on the driver's side. The victim attempted to exit from the passenger door, but defendant pulled her back by the hair and warned her not to try to escape again. Defendant continued to hold the victim by the hair, and ordered her to lean down on the seat so no one would see her. As defendant drove away from the parking lot the victim cried out for help, but to no avail. The victim asked defendant why he had kidnapped her, and he replied that he was taking her to a drug dealer who would apparently not sell to defendant, but who would sell to women. When the victim again asked why defendant would not let her go, he responded "he was just in town for a few days and he wanted to have some fun." During the entire drive, defendant held a knife on the victim and told her if she "didn't do what he said, he would use the knife."
Defendant stopped in the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex and ordered the victim to remove her pants and underwear. Upon seeing another vehicle enter the parking lot, defendant started the truck, drove a short distance down the street, then returned to the parking lot. Defendant attempted three times to vaginally rape the victim, but was unable to achieve penetration. Then, defendant made the victim perform fellatio on him, threatening her with the knife if she bit or hurt him and coercing her performance by keeping the knife against her body and scratching her buttocks with it. After completion of the act, defendant wiped out the interior of the truck with a towel in an apparent effort to remove fingerprints. Defendant stuck the towel in the victim's mouth and told her to leave the truck. However, as she attempted to leave, defendant grabbed her hair, pulled her sideways and stabbed her in the neck. Although bleeding profusely, the victim managed to pull the knife from her neck and began struggling with defendant. Defendant finally threw her from the truck, and she ran toward the nearby apartment complex.
The victim was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she gave police a description of defendant. Residents of the apartment complex who witnessed the struggle corroborated her description. Defendant was apprehended shortly thereafter as he walked back to the grocery store parking lot to retrieve his car.
ISSUE
The legal issue before us is whether a person who forcibly seizes and carries away another person with intent to rape her can be found guilty of aggravated kidnapping, where there is no explicit communication by the kidnapper to the victim that she will only be released if she complies with his demands for sexual gratification, but the circumstances are such that a reasonable person would implicitly understand submission is the price for safe release.
ANALYSIS
La.R.S. 14:44 provides:
Aggravated kidnapping is the doing of any of the following acts with the intent thereby to force the victim, or some other person, to give up anything of apparent present or prospective value, or to grant any advantage or immunity, in order to secure a release of the person under the offender's actual or apparent control:
(1) The forcible seizing and carrying of any person from one place to another; or
(2) The enticing or persuading of any person to go from one place to another; or
(3) The imprisoning or forcible secreting of any person.
Whoever commits the crime of aggravated kidnapping shall be punished by life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.
The present definition of aggravated kidnapping evolved from an early law first enacted in 1855. At that time, kidnapping was not necessarily classified as a felony and was limited to unlawful confinement and transportation of "any free person" out of the state or from one part of the state to another. The statute was in accord with the common law, which had classified kidnapping as a misdeameanor and limited the offense to unlawful confinement and transportation of another out of the country and beyond the protection of its laws. Following the Civil War, the statute was changed to read "any person," but otherwise remained the same. The statute was substantially altered in 1910 to prohibit the forcible taking of children under age fourteen (male) or twelve (female). The penalty was increased from a maximum of five years to a mandatory penalty of death. In 1914, the penalty was reduced to a maximum of twenty years. By 1932, the stair ute was extended to cover the forcible seizing and carrying of "any person or persons," although the penalty remained the same. After the nationwide furor surrounding the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby in 1932, the legislature in 1938 again increased the penalty to death. In 1942, the legislature enacted the crime of aggravated kidnapping and provided for a penalty of death. This statute, unlike previous kidnapping statutes, embodied an intent requirement on the part of the kidnapper. The reporter's comments to the article noted this change:
Louisiana statute compared — intent to extort:
The former Louisiana kidnapping statute provides for the death penalty and apparently applies to all cases, regardless of the kidnapper's intent. The aggravated kidnapping article also carries the death penalty, but is limited to cases of kidnapping for ransom (with intent to extort). Other kidnappings will be punishable as simple kidnapping. [Citations omitted].
Thus, from its inception, the critical distinction between the crime of aggravated kidnapping and the crime of simple kidnapping is the kidnapper's intent to extort. The elements of aggravated kidnapping have remained essentially unchanged since 1942, although the statute was amended in 1980 to eliminate the death penalty and make the penalty a mandatory life sentence.
A careful analysis of the present statute shows the elements of aggravated kidnapping to be:
1. The forcible seizing and;
2. the carrying of any person from one place to another (the asportation element);
3. with the intent to force the victim, or some other person, to give up anything of apparent present or prospective value (the extortion element);
4. in order to secure the release of that person.
There is no question the first element was met, i.e., the victim was forcibly seized. She was grabbed in the parking lot of a grocery store, forced inside her truck, and threatened with a knife if she resisted. Likewise, the second element was satisfied since defendant drove the victim from one parking lot to another in an attempt to isolate her from passersby.
The third element is also met since under our decisions, the seizure of the victim with intent to commit rape constitutes intent to force her to give up something of "apparent present or prospective value." State v. Rault, 445 So.2d 1203 (La.1984), cert. denied, Rault v. Louisiana, 469 U.S. 873, 105 S.Ct. 225, 83 L.Ed.2d 154 (1984); State v. Winn, 412 So.2d 1337 (La.1982); State v. Sonnier, 402 So.2d 650 (La.1981), cert. denied, Sonnier v. Louisiana, 463 U.S. 1229, 103 S.Ct. 3571, 77 L.Ed.2d 1412 (1983).
The court of appeal apparently agreed these first three elements were satisfied but had difficulty with the fourth element, since it found "no evidence in this record which shows that defendant forced the victim to engage in sexual intercourse 'in order to secure [her] release....'" 535 So.2d at 940. We disagree. From our review of the record, we conclude the clear implication of defendant's behavior is that the victim would be released safely only if she acceded to defendant's demand for sexual gratification.
Defendant would have this court expand the fourth element and require the state to prove, either directly or circumstantially, that he explicitly communicated to the victim his intent to release her once he was in receipt of ransom (i.e., sexual gratification). A review of the history of the statute and our jurisprudence reveals such a requirement has never been part of the law of aggravated kidnapping. Rather, all the law has required is evidence of defendant's intent to extort something of value by playing upon the victim's hope of release. In State v. Polk, 376 So.2d 151 (La.1979), Justice Tate observed:
The kidnapping is classified as "aggravated," La.R.S. 14:44, rather than as far less serious "simple kidnapping," La.R.S. 14:45, solely because the seizure and as-portation of the victim was made with the intent to rape her — "to force the victim . to give up anything of apparent present or prospective value" (i.e., the offender's sexual gratification), La.R.S. 14:44; for the intent to extort is the essential difference between the two crimes.
376 So.2d at 152 n. 1 (emphasis added).
It is noteworthy that Justice Tate omitted any mention of explicit communication by the kidnapper to his victim that she would be released only after payment of ransom. Instead, he focused on the requisite intent to obtain something of value through the advantage of the victim's fear and isolation, for it is this advantage which is at the heart of the offense of kidnapping. Similarly, if explicit communication were essential to the crime of aggravated kidnapping, it is highly unlikely we would have omitted discussion of it from our statement of the law in State v. Winn, supra, and State v. Rault, supra.
Winn, supra, involved a defendant who kidnapped his victim at gunpoint from a church, led her into the woods and raped her. The Winn defendant, much like the defendant in the present case, told his victim he would not kill her as long as she cooperated with him, but apparently did not communicate to her that she would only be released after complying with his demand for sexual gratification. This court found the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of aggravated kidnapping.
Rault, supra, involved the review of a death penalty conviction of a defendant who kidnapped, raped and murdered his victim. Witnesses testified they heard the victim screaming defendant was going to rape her, but there was no evidence defendant explicitly communicated to the victim she would only be released upon submitting to him. In reviewing the aggravated kidnapping conviction, we concentrated on the defendant's intent:
In regard to aggravated kidnapping, the only possible hypothesis of innocence, given the clear proof of forcible abduction, is that defendant had no intent to force the victim to cede some property, i.e., sexual intercourse, to secure her release. In other words, when Rault abducted the victim from the parking lot, he had no intent to rape her, only to kill her. This hypothesis is negated by the victim's words as she was being forced into the car.
445 So.2d at 1213.
We did not require evidence of explicit communication by the kidnapper to his victim. Instead, we properly focused on defendant's intent, concluding that under these circumstances, a reasonable person would know the price of safe release was submission, and defendant intended to play upon this hope of release.
Therefore, a study of the applicable jurisprudence clearly shows the relevant factor in applying the fourth element of aggravated kidnapping is not whether the kidnapper explicitly communicated to the victim that performance of sexual acts would result in his or her release, but whether the kidnapper intended to extort sexual gratification from the victim by playing upon the victim's hope for release. This intent is manifested not merely by the kidnapper's words or actions, but by analyzing whether a reasonable person in the victim's place, given the totality of the circumstances, would believe that he or she would not be safely released unless he or she complied with the kidnapper's demands for sexual gratification. Clearly, any reasonable person who was forcibly seized, brought to a remote location, held at knife-point and threatened in no uncertain terms with the use of that weapon, would comply with the abductor's demands in the hope of securing a safe release. Defendant's threat to the victim that he would "use the knife" if she did not do what he ordered plainly manifested his intent to force her to give in to his sexual demands with the hope of securing her safe release. Requiring additional evidence that defendant expressly announced to the victim she would not be released unless she complied with his demands is overly technical and unnecessary within the parameters of La.R.S. 14:44.
Furthermore, such a requirement could potentially give kidnappers an incentive to kill their victims. Given the nature of the crime of kidnapping, the only potential witness is often the victim. If we were to adopt the explicit communication requirement advocated by defendant, the kidnapper who slays his victim would stand little chance of being convicted of aggravated kidnapping, since the only person who could testify about communication would be dead. Meanwhile, a less culpable defendant who verbally promises to release his victim once she complies with his demands and actually does so would be subject to prosecution for aggravated kidnapping based on the victim's testimony. By looking to the victim's perception of what he or she must do in order to survive, we avoid such an anomalous result.
Thus, the crucial question in determining whether an aggravated kidnapping has occurred is not whether the defendant had intent to release the victim at either the outset of the crime or indeed at any point during the crime. The more important question and the issue to be focused upon is whether the defendant sought to obtain something of value, be it sex or money or loss of simple human dignity, by playing upon the victim's fear and hope of eventual release in order to gain compliance with his demands.
After reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, we believe any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime of aggravated kidnapping were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Accordingly, we believe the court of appeal erred in finding otherwise and setting aside the conviction for aggravated kidnapping.
DECREE
For the reasons assigned, the judgment of the court of appeal is reversed insofar as it sets aside defendant's conviction for aggravated kidnapping and remands for re-sentencing for simple kidnapping. Defendant's conviction for aggravated kidnapping is reinstated. In all other respects, the decision of the court of appeal is affirmed.
AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART.
LEMMON, J., concurs and assigns reasons.
CALOGERO, J., concurs in part, dissents in part and assigns reasons.