Opinion ID: 165225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether Gabaldon's confinement of Dale was merely incidental to her murder

Text: 27 Gabaldon also argues that the evidence at trial failed to show that Dale's confinement was anything more than a merely incidental part of her murder. He bases his argument on the Third Circuit's decision in Government of the Virgin Islands v. Berry, where the court overturned a conviction under the Virgin Islands' territorial kidnapping statute on the grounds that the victim's confinement had been purely incidental to his robbery and therefore did not amount to an independent confinement that could justify a kidnapping conviction. 604 F.2d 221, 228 (3d Cir.1979). 28 The Berry court based its analysis on state courts' interpretation of state kidnapping statutes, under which the crime of kidnapping was not said to have occurred if the seizure or asportation of the victim was merely incidental to the commission of other substantive crimes. Id. at 227 (quotation omitted). The concern motivating both the Berry court and the state courts on which it relied was that a too-literal application of the kidnapping statute would permit overzealous prosecutors to charge those suspected of relatively minor crimes involving some degree of restraint or asportation with the much more serious crime of kidnapping. Id. at 226-27. In order to avoid this difficulty, the Third Circuit adopted a four-factor test for distinguishing crimes for which kidnapping charges are justified from those where they are not, listing the factors as: 29 (1) the duration of detention or asportation; 30 (2) whether the detention or asportation occurred during the commission of a separate offense; (3) whether the detention or asportation which occurred is inherent in the separate offense; and 31 (4) whether the asportation or detention created a significant danger to the victim independent of that posed by the separate offense. 32 Id. at 227. 33 The Berry test has not been widely adopted by other Circuits, a fact that may be a natural result of the fact that most federal kidnapping cases involve § 1201(a)(1), which criminalizes the interstate transportation of an abducted person. See United States v. Jones, 808 F.2d 561, 565-66 (7th Cir.1986) (rejecting as wholly irrelevant the argument that an interstate kidnapping was merely incidental to the interstate transportation of a woman for an immoral purpose in violation of the Mann Act, on the grounds that kidnapping and Mann Act offenses were distinct and separately punishable); United States v. Lowe, 145 F.3d 45, 52 (1st Cir.1998) (same). An abduction or seizure that involves enough distance traveled and time elapsed in order for the captor and the victim to cross state lines will generally constitute a bona fide kidnapping. Where, as here, the statute requires only that a seizure or restraint take place within the special territorial jurisdiction of the United States, the difficulty highlighted by the Berry court is more likely to arise. 34 The Eleventh Circuit recognized this problem in United States v. Howard, where it confronted a case in which defendants challenged their convictions for attempting unlawfully to detain a DEA agent in violation of § 1201(a)(5), on the grounds that the attempted seizure was merely incidental to their crime of attempted robbery. 918 F.2d 1529, 1534 (11th Cir.1990). Adopting the Berry test, the Eleventh Circuit invalidated the attempted kidnapping convictions, finding the evidence insufficient for a reasonable jury to have concluded beyond reasonable doubt that defendants planned to detain their victim for longer than necessary to rob him or that their limited detention of the DEA agent exceeded what would have been inherently necessary for a successful robbery. Id. at 1536-37. See also United States v. Etsitty, 130 F.3d 420, 428-29 (9th Cir.1997) (Kleinfeld, J., concurring) (arguing that § 1201(a)(2) requires a seized or confined person to be held for an appreciable period, beyond what would be required for an assailant simply to attempt a sexual assault). 35 Our Circuit has yet to take a position either adopting or rejecting the Berry test. 3 Although we find much in the Berry test to commend its use in a § 1201(a)(2) situation, we do not need to decide in this case whether formally to adopt the Berry test. Here, the evidence clearly established kidnapping as a separate crime even if we were to adopt the Berry test. Cf. United States v. Peden, 961 F.2d 517, 522-23 (5th Cir.1992) (recognizing the problems the Berry test was meant to address, but declining to adopt or reject that test where its test requirements would have been met on the facts of the case). Gabaldon concedes that he held Dale longer than would have been minimally necessary for her to be murdered as he acknowledged in his appellate brief that they drove around with Dale while deciding what to do with her. What is more, the jury was presented with ample evidence to support a conclusion that Gabaldon decided to continue transporting the unconscious and battered Dale in his car, not just because he wanted to kill her, but because he wanted to avoid arrest and prosecution on battery charges. 36 The evidence presented at trial was sufficient for a reasonable jury to have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Gabaldon held Dale against her will for a purpose or benefit he desired, and that her confinement was not merely an inconsequential and inherent side-effect of her murder. We therefore reject Gabaldon's sufficiency of evidence claims.