Opinion ID: 2820093
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Indictment—Kidnapping

Text: Boykin argues that the district court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on the kidnapping charge because the indictment failed to contain the element of kidnapping requiring that the purpose of holding the victim was for ransom, reward or otherwise. Boykin contends that for ransom, reward or otherwise was an essential element of the offense and that the indictment's failure to include such language violated his Fifth Amendment right to be tried on charges found by the grand jury. We generally review de novo a challenge to the sufficiency of an indictment, but Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(2) requires such challenges to be raised prior to trial, and a failure to do so constitutes a waiver. United States v. Villarreal, 707 F.3d 942, 957 (8th Cir. 2013) (quotation and citation omitted). Nevertheless, a defendant may raise at any time a claim that the indictment fails to state an offense. Id. (citation omitted). Here, Boykin admittedly did not raise his sufficiency challenge to the indictment prior to trial; therefore, we apply a more deferential standard of review, because [w]hen an indictment is challenged after jeopardy attaches, it is upheld unless it is so defective that by no reasonable construction can it be said to charge the offense. Id. (alteration in original) (quotations and citations omitted). -7- An indictment need not use the specific words of the statute as long as by fair implication it alleges an offense recognized by law. Id. (quotations and citations omitted). Only when an essential element of substance rather than of form is omitted is an indictment fatally insufficient. Id. (quotation and citation omitted). To determine whether an essential element has been omitted, a court may not insist that a particular word or phrase appear in the indictment when the element is alleged in a form which substantially states the element. Id. (quotations and citation omitted). An indictment's citation to the applicable statute '[is] not in itself sufficient to supply an element of a charged offense omitted by the grand jury'; however, when such a citation is 'considered in combination with the other allegations in the indictment as a whole, [it may be] adequate under the circumstances to have charged the defendant with the offense for which he was convicted.' Id. at 957–58 (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Diaz-Diaz, 135 F.3d 572, 576 (8th Cir. 1998)). Boykin was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1), which provides: (a) Whoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person, except in the case of a minor by the parent thereof, when— (1) the person is willfully transported in interstate or foreign commerce, regardless of whether the person was alive when transported across a State boundary, or the offender travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses the mail or any means, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in committing or in furtherance of the commission of the offense . . .