Opinion ID: 787694
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Federal Kidnapping Act

Text: 21 Adopted in 1932, the Federal Kidnapping Act (the Act) was primarily designed to assist the states in stamping out [the] growing and sinister menace of kidnapping where perpetrators transported their victims across state lines in order to frustrate state authorities confined in their investigations by jurisdictional boundaries. Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455, 463, 66 S.Ct. 233, 90 L.Ed. 198 (1946). As amended, the Act now authorizes the punishment of death or life imprisonment of anyone who 22 unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person, ... when ... the person is willfully transported in interstate or foreign commerce, regardless of whether the person was alive when transported across a State boundary if the person was alive when the transportation began ..., if the death of any person results. 23 18 U.S.C.A. § 1201(a)(1). 24 Accordingly, in order to establish a kidnapping resulting in death under section 1201(a)(1), the government was required to prove (1) the jurisdictional component of interstate transportation; (2) that Doris was unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnapped, abducted, or carried away; (3) that Doris was held for ransom or reward or otherwise; and (4) that death resulted. Higgs, 353 F.3d at 313; United States v. Wills, 234 F.3d 174, 177 (4th Cir.2000) ( Wills I ).