Opinion ID: 1407600
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: FAILURE OF EVIDENCE TO PROVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF FIRST DEGREE KIDNAPPING UNDER JACKSON v. VIRGINIA

Text: [2] As indicated above, kidnapping is a specific element of aggravated murder in the first degree. It is, however, a separate and distinct statutory crime having specific elements each of which must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Unchallenged instruction No. 9 defines the essential elements of statutory kidnapping as follows: A person commits the crime of kidnapping in the first degree when he intentionally abducts another person with intent to facilitate the commission of any felony or flight thereafter. Abduct means to restrain a person by either (a) secreting or holding her in a place where she is not likely to be found, or (b) using or threatening to use deadly force. Restraint means to restrict a person's movement without consent and without legal authority in a manner which interferes substantially with her liberty. Restraint is without consent if it is accomplished by (a) physical force, intimidation, or deception, or (b) any means including acquiescence of the victim, if she is a child less than sixteen years old when the parent or other lawful guardian has not acquiesced. (Italics ours.) RCW 9A.40.010(2) and .020. From the foregoing, it is clear abduction is a critical element in the proof of kidnapping. There are three distinct bases upon which the State may rely to establish abduction, each of which necessarily involves restraint: (1) restraint by means of secreting the victim in a place where he or she is not likely to be found; (2) restraint by means of a threat to use deadly force; and (3) restraint by means of deadly force other than the killing itself. The State would add a fourth, i.e., restraint supplied by the killing itself. Each of the four bases is examined more fully below. [3] In considering kidnapping by any of the four means set forth above it is important to note that each is wholly separate and distinct from the others. RCW 9A.40.010(1), (2)(a), (b); RCW 9A.40.020. While each requires restraint and at least the first three ultimately may support a charge of kidnapping, the specific means comprising restraint in one are not interchangeable with the specific means required to establish any of the others. Each must be independently proved and none can stand upon a combination of the others to fill a critical void.
In determining whether there is sufficient evidence of restraint by means of secreting the victim under either the substantial evidence or the Jackson test, the setting of events and the physical surroundings must be examined carefully. The area where the State asserts the victim was secreted, i.e., the apartment's exterior loading area, had no outside doors, was visible from the children's play area and a tire swing located only about 30 feet away, and could be viewed from the rear windows of another apartment only about 40 feet distant. In short, the exterior loading area was plainly visible from the outside. Additionally, the apartment's first floor rear exit, or fire door, opened into one end of the exterior loading area only a few feet from where Mr. Miners observed Green and the victim. This door provided additional public access to the area. Further, the place where Green and the victim were found was near the bottom of the back stairway which led to all of the upstairs apartments. This stairway was used in common by the occupants of and visitors to the apartments. Finally, at best, a total of only 2 to 3 minutes elapsed from the time the victim first screamed to the time Mr. Miners reached the exterior loading area and actually saw Kelly in Green's arms. Considering the unusually short time involved, the minimal distance the victim was moved (estimated variously, by the prosecuting attorney, as from 20 to 50 feet), the location of the participants when found, the clear visibility of that location from the outside as well as the total lack of any evidence of actual isolation from open public areas, there is no substantial evidence of restraint by means of secreting the victim in a place where she was not likely to be found. Further, under the Jackson test, no rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt, that the victim had been restrained by means of secreting her in a place where she was not likely to be found. Under either test it is clear Green could hardly have chosen a more public place to accost his victim or commit the homicide some 2 to 3 minutes later. [4] Moreover, although appellant lifted and moved the victim to the apartment's exterior loading area, it is clear these events were actually an integral part of and not independent of the underlying homicide. While movement of the victim occurred, the mere incidental restraint and movement of a victim which might occur during the course of a homicide are not, standing alone, indicia of a true kidnapping. See State v. Johnson, 92 Wn.2d 671, 676, 600 P.2d 1249 (1979). Although we characterize the movement and restraint in this case as incidental, we do not mean to suggest that under every conceivable set of facts a movement of 20 to 50 feet or being found in a stairwell would be incidental. That which constitutes incidental movement is not solely a matter of measuring feet and inches. It is a determination to be made under the facts of each case, in light of the totality of surrounding circumstances. This characterization is as much a consideration of the relation between the restraint and the homicide as it is a measure of the precise distance moved or place held. It involves an evaluation of the nature of the restraint in which distance is but one factor to be considered. As stated by the Michigan Court of Appeals in People v. Adams, 389 Mich. 222, 236, 205 N.W.2d 415 (1973) in referring to a case of assault: We have concluded that under the kidnapping statute a movement of the victim does not constitute an asportation unless it has significance independent of the assault. And, unless the victim is removed from the environment where he is found, the consequences of the movement itself to the victim are not independently significant from the assault  the movement does not manifest the commission of a separate crime  and punishment for injury to the victim must be founded upon crimes other than kidnapping. New York has taken a similar view of the merging of a technical kidnapping when that kidnapping is merely incidental to the commission of another crime. People v. Cassidy, 40 N.Y.2d 763, 358 N.E.2d 870, 390 N.Y.S.2d 45 (1976); People v. Levy, 15 N.Y.2d 159, 164, 204 N.E.2d 842, 256 N.Y.S.2d 793, cert. denied, 381 U.S. 938, 14 L.Ed.2d 701, 85 S.Ct. 1770 (1965). See also State v. Johnson, supra . We hold that kidnapping by means of secreting or holding the victim in a place where she was not likely to be found has not been established either by substantial evidence or by the standard of proof required by Jackson v. Virginia, supra .
A careful review of the record discloses no evidence that Green employed a threat to use deadly force as required by instruction No. 9 and RCW 9A.40.010(2)(b). Thus, we conclude there is no substantial evidence of that means and also conclude no rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim had been restrained in that manner, as required by Jackson.
Our review of the evidence discloses no evidence of restraint by deadly force other than the stabbing of the victim. While the record indicates Green lifted the victim and carried her to the exterior loading area, such conduct, without more, does not amount to the use of deadly force. We are compelled to conclude there is no evidence of restraint by means of deadly force other than that employed in the ultimate killing. Thus kidnapping by means of deadly force other than that employed in the ultimate killing has not been established by substantial evidence or by the standard of proof required by Jackson.
[5] Pursuant to instruction No. 9 and RCW 9A.40.010(2)(b) the State may establish kidnapping if the victim is restrained by the use of deadly force. While it is clear in this case that deadly force was employed ( i.e., the killing itself), we conclude that restraint by an ultimate killing does not, in and of itself, establish kidnapping. RCW 9A.40.010(2)(b) contemplates employment of a deadly force that stops short of actual homicide. When the State establishes a killing it may have proved a homicide or some other crime, but it has not established kidnapping. In the broadest sense the infliction of a fatal wound is the ultimate form of restraint because it obviously restrict[s] a person's movement ... in a manner which interferes substantially with [the person's] liberty. RCW 9A.40.010(1). If such logic is applied to the law of kidnapping, however, every intentional killing would also be a kidnapping because the killing itself would supply the requisite restraint ( i.e., the killing being the ultimate form of restraint). Moreover, every intentional killing would automatically become murder in the first degree under RCW 9A.32.030(c)(5), which provides that one causing the death of another in the course of any kidnapping is automatically guilty of murder in the first degree. Most importantly, the intentional killing, converted thusly into first degree murder, would in turn automatically be converted into aggravated murder in the first degree under RCW 9A.32.045(7) because it was committed in the course of a kidnapping. Clearly Initiative 316 was intended to identify those crimes which are particularly outrageous, to enhance the degrees of culpability and to elevate the status of such crimes. There is nothing to indicate, however, that the people of this state intended to employ the kidnapping statute in such a convoluted way as to eliminate all distinction among intentional killings. On the contrary, the initiative carefully set out seven specific circumstances in which a first degree murder could be elevated into a crime punishable by death. It did not, either specifically or by inference, indicate that its purpose was to automatically convert every intentional killing into aggravated murder in the first degree punishable by death. Thus, we are compelled to conclude evidence of the killing itself does not establish the restraint necessary to prove kidnapping based on restraint by the use of deadly force under RCW 9A.40.010(2)(b). It is evident from the foregoing analysis that the State has failed to establish the elements of kidnapping either by the substantial evidence test adopted in Green I or beyond a reasonable doubt as required by Jackson. Accordingly, one of the two critical grounds upon which the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree was based fails. If the charge of aggravated murder in the first degree is to stand, it must be based solely on the charge of first degree rape.