Opinion ID: 2445
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence to Violate the Hostage Act

Text: Before considering, under the applicable standard, see Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), whether the evidence permitted the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendants violated the Hostage Act, we face the threshold issue of the applicability of the Hostage Act to the Defendants' conduct. The Defendants contend that the Act may not be applied to what they characterize as essentially a taxi fare dispute. In considering this issue, we note that the Defendants make no claim that the evidence was insufficient to support their substantive and conspiracy convictions for unlawful transportation of an alien. Initially, it might be questioned whether the Hostage Act may be validly applied to any conduct that is not related to international terrorism. The Conference Report on the Act makes clear that it implements the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. See H.R. Conf. Rep. 98-1159, at 418, 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3710, 3714. The preamble to the Convention states that the Convention binds its signatories to adopt effective measures for the prevention, prosecution and punishment of all acts of taking of hostages as manifestations of international terrorism.  Convention, preamble, T.I.A.S. No. 11,081 (emphasis added). President Reagan sent to Congress draft legislation that was the predecessor of the Hostage Act [t]o demonstrate to other governments and international forums that the United States is serious about its efforts to deal with international terrorism. See Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Four Drafts of Proposed Legislation to Attack the Pressing and Urgent Problem of International Terrorism, H.R. Doc. No. 98-211, 98th Cong., 2d Sess, at 3 (April 26, 1984). As the Department of Justice has acknowledged, the offense created by the Hostage Act is defined in substantially the same manner as under the Convention. U.S. Department of Justice, Handbook on the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and Other Criminal Statutes Enacted by the 98th Congress 199 (December 1984) (Handbook). Indeed, the Hostage Act did not become effective until the Convention came into force and the United States became a party to it. See 18 U.S.C.A. § 1203, Historical and Statutory Notes, Effective and Applicability Provisions; Handbook 200. Furthermore, when this Court considered a constitutional challenge to the Hostage Act on the ground that the Convention itself was beyond the treaty power of Article II of the Constitution, we emphasized that the Convention addresses a matter of grave concern to the international community: hostage taking as a vehicle for terrorism. Wang Kun Lue, 134 F.3d at 83. And we upheld the Hostage Act because it plainly bears a rational relationship to the Convention. Id. at 84. A scheme to detain a person in order to extort a taxi fare, even an excessive taxi fare, is not a manifestation of international terrorism. However, although the first case involving the Hostage Act arose out of a terrorist hijacking of an international flight, see United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086 (D.C.Cir.1991), the case law that has developed under the Act has not limited it to conduct related to international terrorism, and has applied it to several instances of confining illegal aliens and demanding payment for their release. See United States v. Tchibassa, 452 F.3d 918 (D.C.Cir.2006); United States v. Si Lu Tian, 339 F.3d 143 (2d Cir.2003); United States v. Ferreira, 275 F.3d 1020 (11th Cir.2001); United States v. Fei Lin, 139 F.3d 1303, supplemented by United States v. Fei, 141 F.3d 1180 (9th Cir.1998) (table); Wang Kun Lue, 134 F.3d at 81; United States v. Lopez-Flores, 63 F.3d 1468 (9th Cir.1995); United States v. Carrion-Caliz, 944 F.2d 220 (5th Cir.1991); see also United States v. Montenegro, 231 F.3d 389 (7th Cir.2000) (confinement of aliens to demand payment for narcotics); United States v. Santos-Riviera, 183 F.3d 367 (5th Cir.1999) (confinement of United States citizen infant to demand ransom for her release); United States v. Hung Shun Lin, 101 F.3d 760 (D.C.Cir.1996) (confinement of aliens to demand payment of telephone bills). Even though the case law has now established that a Hostage Act violation does not require a link to international terrorism, the original purpose of the statute serves as a frame of reference to caution against stretching the coverage of the Act. In the pending case, for example, the defendants' conduct undoubtedly violated the statute punishing the unlawful transportation of an alien, 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii), and perhaps other federal and state statutes. Whether their conduct violated the Hostage Act, however, requires precise consideration of what the Government proved, measured against the elements of that offense. To prove a violation of the Hostage Act, the Government must show that a defendant (1) seized or detained another person, and (2) threatened to kill, injure, or continue to detain that person, (3) with the purpose of compelling a third person or governmental organization to act in some way, or to refrain from acting in some way. Si Lu Tian, 339 F.3d at 150 (citations omitted). If the offense occurred inside the United States, the Act applies only if one defendant or the victim is an alien (unless the entity sought to be compelled is the United States). See Santos-Riviera, 183 F.3d at 370 (alien status of offender or victim is affirmative defense). As applied to the pending case, these elements required the Government to prove that the defendant detained Mendez and continued to detain her for the purpose of compelling her husband to pay the taxi fare of $475. The jury was entitled to find that Mendez was detained in Garcia-Reynoso's taxi at the MacArthur Airport. After seeing her husband, she said that she wanted to leave the taxi, but Rodriguez persuaded her not to leave by warning her of the risk of being picked up my immigration officers. Although, as an undocumented alien who had just been smuggled into the United States, she feared that possibility before she entered the taxi, the defendants preyed on that fear, and fear ... can be sufficient to restrain a person against her will. Carrion-Caliz, 944 F.2d at 225. The jury could also find that the defendants continued to detain Mendez at the service area for the purpose of compelling her husband to pay $475. However, the case law interpreting the Hostage Act has required that a defendant confine a victim `for an appreciable period of time.' Si Lu Tian, 339 F.3d at 152 (quoting Carrion-Caliz, 944 F.2d at 225). This requirement derives from the Supreme Court's construction of the Federal Kidnaping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201. See Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455, 460, 66 S.Ct. 233, 90 L.Ed. 198 (1946) (construing predecessor statute, 18 U.S.C. § 408a (1940) (The act of holding a kidnapped person for a proscribed purpose [ i.e., held for ransom or reward or otherwise] necessarily implies an unlawful physical or mental restraint for an appreciable period against the person's will and with a willful intent so to confine the victim.)). Whether Mendez was held, in violation of the Hostage Act, for an appreciable period of time requires identification of the relevant time period. The Government contends that the confinement of Mendez began at the MacArthur Airport, and the evidence clearly entitled to jury to so find. The approximately three-hour journey from the MacArthur Airport to the service area in New Jersey would qualify as an appreciable period of time, but although the start of that journey suffices to begin the conspiracy and substantive offenses of transporting an alien in violation of section 1324, it does not begin the hostage taking offense. That offense requires detaining and continuing to detain a person to compel a third person to do an act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the person detained. 18 U.S.C. § 1203(a). [3] The defendants did not try to compel Perez to pay money to obtain the release of his wife until he arrived at the Monmouth service area. The confinement following the demand for payment lasted at most fifteen minutes. At the earlier encounter between Rodriguez and Perez alongside the Long Island Expressway, Rodriguez urged Perez to make an arrangement with Reynoso, but, crediting Perez's account and drawing all reasonable inferences from his version of the conversation, the jury could not reasonably find that Perez was being urged to make an arrangement with Reynoso for Mendez's release. Rodriguez neither said nor implied anything to suggest that paying for the taxi ride was a condition for her release. Indeed, Perez had no reason to think that his wife was then detained and never claimed that he then thought so. Detaining Mendez for the purpose of compelling a third person to do an act as a condition for her release did not occur until the demand for payment was made at the service area. [4] It might have been contended that even if the substantive offense did not occur until that point, the defendants earlier conspired to induce Mendez to enter the van by preying on her fear and did so with the ultimate intention of getting someone to pay them as a condition of her later release. We need not consider whether, on that theory, the evidence would have supported a conspiracy conviction because the jury acquitted on the hostage taking conspiracy count. Thus, the Hostage Act applies to the Defendants' conduct only if the interval from the time a demand was made upon Mendez's husband at the service area to secure his wife's release until Mendez got out of the taxi constitutes an appreciable period of time. In Si Lu Tian, the aliens were confined for twenty days. See 339 F.3d at 154. In Carrion-Caliz, the confinement lasted eight days. See 944 F.2d at 221. In Hung Shun Lin, the aliens were confined during a day and were beaten. See 101 F.3d at 764-65; In Santos-Riviera, the abduction of an infant lasted a few hours. See 183 F.3d at 368. Even if the threshold for appreciable period of time should be somewhat diminished if the victim is injured or threatened with injury, or, like the infant in Santos-Riviera, is especially vulnerable to injury during confinement, the fifteen minutes that Mendez was confined in the taxi at the service area, without any injury or threat of injury, is not sufficient to establish a Hostage Act violation, especially in view of the fact that during most of that interval the defendants, Mendez, and her husband were waiting for the arrival of the police whom they all knew had been called. Although ransom demanded to satisfy a legitimate debt can violate the Hostage Act, see Hung Shun Lin, 101 F.3d at 766, during that brief interval, there was confinement incident to a taxi fare dispute, which may have constituted an act of extortion, [5] but not the confinement of a hostage proscribed by the Hostage Act. The convictions on Count 2 must be reversed.