Opinion ID: 2588202
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Appellant's kidnapping conviction for taking his own daughter

Text: Hernandez asserts, as he did below, that it is impossible for him to be convicted of kidnapping his daughter. Hernandez attacks the applicability and validity of the kidnapping statute in a number of ways. NRS 200.359(1)(a) provides that it is a category D felony for a parent with no right of custody or a person having a limited right of custody to a child to violate a court order and remove the child from a person having lawful custody. Hernandez argues that this statute is more specific than and takes precedence over NRS 200.310, which proscribes kidnapping as either a category A or B felony, but does not explicitly address the taking of a child by a parent with limited custody. He claims that application of NRS 200.310 to his case violated his rights to due process, equal protection, and a fair trial. We conclude that this argument lacks merit. Hernandez has not shown that NRS 200.359 and 200.310 are in conflict, and this court has never treated such statutes as conflicting. The matter at issue here involves not conflicting statutes but prosecutorial discretion in charging. We have followed the United States Supreme Court's holding that neither due process nor equal protection were violated under federal constitutional principles by virtue of the fact that the government prescribed different penalties in two separate statutes for the same conduct. [8] [A] defendant's rights are adequately protected in this area by the `constitutional constraints' on a prosecutor's discretion, which prevent the prosecutor from selectively enforcing the law based on such unjustifiable criteria as race or religion. [9] This court has also stated that where conviction for multiple offenses might be redundant, accepting [a guilty plea without the State's approval] undermines prosecutorial discretion in charging and the state's interest in obtaining a conviction on the other charges, which may be the more `serious' charges. [10] We conclude that the prosecutors acted within their reasonable discretion in charging kidnapping here. In addition, Hernandez invokes the rule of lenity. This rule calls for the liberal interpretation of criminal statutes to favor the accused in resolving ambiguities. [11] But NRS 200.310, the kidnapping statute, applies unambiguously to Hernandez's actionshe simply wants NRS 200.359 applied instead. Hernandez further argues that the State was equitably estopped from prosecuting him under NRS 200.310 rather than NRS 200.359; however, his authorities are not apposite, and his argument is meritless. Hernandez also claims that NRS 200.310 is unconstitutionally vague. Statutes enjoy a presumption of validity, and the burden is on the party attacking them to show their unconstitutionality. [12] A statute violates due process if it is so vague that it fails to give persons of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what conduct is prohibited and fails to provide law enforcement officials with adequate guidelines to prevent discriminatory enforcement. [13] Where, as here, First Amendment interests are not implicated, the challenged statute must be shown to be impermissibly vague in all its applications or at least as applied to the defendant in question. [14] NRS 200.310(2) provides in relevant part that [a] person who willfully and without authority of law seizes ... another person... for the purpose of conveying the person out of the state without authority of law, ... is guilty of kidnapping in the second degree. Hernandez fails to show that this language did not provide him with fair notice that his conduct in taking Ana was criminal, let alone that the statute is vague in all its applications. Finally, Hernandez argues that it was a legal impossibility for him to kidnap Ana because upon Donna's death he became Ana's sole legal custodian. Although this court did not decide this issue in Sheriff v. Dhadda, [15] that case supports the proposition that a parent having legal custody of a child can nevertheless be convicted of kidnapping the child. In Dhadda, we concluded that there was sufficient evidence under NRS 200.310(1) to prosecute a mother for kidnapping her own daughter because the State demonstrated ... probable cause to believe that [the mother] took [the daughter] to the river for the purpose of killing her or inflicting substantial bodily harm upon her. [16] In this case, Hernandez acted without authority of law in taking Ana because he violated a protective order, a custody decree, and criminal statutes when he murdered Donna and took Ana. [17] We conclude that his status as sole surviving parent of Ana once he murdered Donna did not render his seizure of Ana lawful. [18]