Court Opinion

ID: 9471097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:25:06.882813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:16.309853
License: Public Domain

MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Regarding the purely legal question presented, namely, whether the kidnapping statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1), requires a relationship between the misbehavior and the interstate travel that supports federal criminal jurisdiction, I agree with the answer reached by the majority opinion. A relationship between the interstate travel and the kidnapping itself is required. There must be some unlawful interference by the defendant with the liberty of the victim which preceded, and which may be said to have facilitated in some way, the interstate travel. “The very nature of the crime of kidnapping requires that the kidnapper use some means of force — actual or threatened, physical or mental — in each elemental stage of the crime, so that the victim is taken, held, and transported against his or her will.” United States v. Macklin, 671 F.2d 60, 64 (2d Cir.1982) (emphasis supplied).1
For purposes of the case here, then, it was essential that the government establish that the defendant, Hughes, unlawfully interfered with the liberty of his victim, Miss Childers, at some point in time before the two crossed the bridge between Huntington, West Virginia, and Burlington, Ohio. The panel majority concludes that the government succeeded in carrying its burden, advancing the theory that the essential element of proof can be found in Hughes’ deceitful behavior towards Miss Childers. According to the panel majority’s view of the case, the evidence is sufficient to support a finding that Hughes intended to visit harm upon Miss Childers and lulled her into a false sense of security in order to perfect his plan.
The Constitution, however, requires that every fact essential to the crime be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1072, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). The evidence adduced by the government at trial simply was insufficient to permit a rational jury to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hughes was possessed of an evil intent to harm Miss Childers before the interstate transportation was completed and, thus, fraudulently induced Miss Childers into taking or, at the least, into completing, the interstate journey.
What evidence there is does not establish that the criminal behavior and criminal intent related to the time frame before the bridge spanning the border between West Virginia and Ohio had been traversed. Consequently, for all the proof there was, those actions were exclusively restricted to the state of Ohio. Certainly the existence of a criminal intent before the bridge was crossed was not established beyond a reasonable doubt. The undisputed evidence shows that Miss Childers had formed the purpose of getting together with her friend, Marsha Nelson, well before she ever met the defendant. Whatever nefarious scheme one may suspect from Hughes’ “picking up” of Miss Childers, there is nothing to suggest *244that he had any plans for which an Ohio locale was preferable to one in West Virginia. The evidence shows that Miss Childers, having met the defendant, was the one who introduced the topic of an interstate journey by voluntarily suggesting that he drive her to Ohio in order that she might, indeed, meet her friend. The two then drove, first around Huntington and then across the border into Ohio, in circumstances entirely devoid of any unpleasantness. It was not until later, after Hughes and Miss Childers had completed their interstate journey and after the two had, according to the testimony of Miss Childers, sat quietly for several minutes along a dark and secluded sideroad, that Hughes became violent. Nothing, nothing at all, points to any illegal intent on the part of Hughes prior to those moments immediately leading up to the assault. It is entirely likely that something Miss Childers then did, or, as probably, did not do was what brought about Hughes’ violent actions and first brought into existence his plans to implement them.
The majority opinion, reaching a contrary conclusion, relies heavily upon a brief eight-line colloquy that took place during Miss Childers’ testimony:
Q: When you asked this fellow if he would take you to your friend Marsha Nelson’s house, did he agree?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know whether or not Sammy Hughes [the assailant identified himself to Miss Childers as “Sammy Hughes”] knew Marsha Nelson?
A: He acted like he did.
Q: Did you talk while you were in the truck?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you talk about?
A: Mostly about Marsha and Harry [Nelson, Marsha’s brother].
That colloquy, taken in conjunction with Hughes’ admission that he did not know Marsha Nelson, is cited to support the proposition that a jury could have found that Hughes initiated the entire encounter with Miss Childers, deceived her into believing that he was an acquaintance of Marsha Nelson, and did so first to win Miss Childers’ confidence and then to do her harm.
So much, however, cannot be constructed from so little in the way of evidence. Nowhere in the record is there evidence that Hughes in fact told Miss Childers that he knew Marsha Nelson. Nowhere in the record is there a claim by Miss Childers that she asked Hughes for a ride on the basis of any trust or faith she may have developed in light of a supposed friendship between Hughes and Marsha Nelson. Nowhere in the record is there evidence that Miss Childers at any time travelled in reliance upon the belief that Hughes knew Marsha Nelson. Nowhere in the record is there any evidence that the violence visited by Hughes on Miss Childers was contemplated at any time before they had crossed the bridge into Ohio. Hughes wanted Miss Childers in the truck all right, but nothing suggested that what he wanted had any Ohio advantage associated with it. The sole reason, so far as the record discloses, for the journey between West Virginia and Ohio was to satisfy Miss Childers’s wish to visit a friend. Nothing suggests that the interstate movement, so far as Hughes was concerned, was anything more than an affirmative response to Miss Childers’ request to be taken to Ohio.
No doubt the facts presented at trial could be depicted skillfully in a way to show that a non-illogical inference might be drawn against Hughes. But the Constitution demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and not merely evidence from which a chain of logically unprecludable yet nevertheless speculative inferences might be forged. Such speculation is precisely insufficient to support a verdict in a criminal trial. See, e.g., United States v. Carter, 522 F.2d 666, 681-82 (D.C.Cir.1975). The evidence, viewed as it must be in its totality, fails to refute — and indeed points *245strongly toward — the inference that the interstate travel at issue here was entirely voluntary, and that the criminal behavior which subsequently occurred in Ohio is, thus, punishable not under the laws of the United States, but solely under the laws of Ohio.2
I in no way mean to condone the misbehavior of Hughes. However, we are to apply the law as it is, not reconstitute it in a way which might appear, in a single instance, more appropriate. There is a continuing tension between the authority of the individual states and the power of the central federal colossus. Congress, we can only assume, perceived the general political wisdom of leaving punishment in cases not involving forced transportation in interstate commerce to the courts and prosecutors of the individual states.

. Our decision in United States v. Lewis, 662 F.2d 1087 (4th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 955, 102 S.Ct. 1464, 71 L.Ed.2d 672 (1982), does not detract from that conclusion. In Lewis, we held that the 1972 and 1976 amendments to § 1201, which added three additional jurisdictional bases, were intended to extend the scope of federal criminal jurisdiction but were not intended to convert what, in fact, was one single kidnapping into four separate crimes. “[A]s amended, [§ 1201] creates a single crime with four jurisdictional bases rather than four different crimes.” 662 F.2d at 1090.
The issue presented here is what relationship, if any, there must be between the acts of restraint, inveiglement or seizure of the victim and the jurisdictional predicate invoked by the government. The court in Lewis neither reached nor had occasion to reach that issue.

. It is highly instructive to consider, by way of contrast, the two cases cited by the majority in support of its conclusion. Both cases featured strong reasons, supported by hard evidence, to believe that the defendant harbored an evil intent from the very beginning of his dealings with the victim and, indeed, induced the subsequent interstate transportation.
In United States v. Hoog, 504 F.2d 45 (8th Cir.1974), cert, denied, 420 U.S. 961, 95 S.Ct. 1349, 43 L.Ed.2d 437 (1975), the defendant and a compatriot raped three women after each of the victims had been transported in interstate commerce. Because the defendant’s accomplice was awaiting the defendant and the victim at the scene of the eventual crime, the inference was inescapable that the transportation was part and parcel of a preordained plan to do wrong.
In Davidson v. United States, 312 F.2d 163 (8th Cir.1963), a forty-five year old man enticed a six year old female child to enter his car and drove her from one state into another and back again. Some time during the odyssey, he molested the child sexually. The tender age of the victim precluded an inference of voluntary travel, as the Davidson court acknowledged in its effort to distinguish Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455, 66 S.Ct. 233, 90 L.Ed. 198 (1946), the landmark Supreme Court decision which held that transportation voluntary on the part of the victim, there a fifteen year old girl, could not give rise to a conviction under the federal kidnapping statute.
Unlike those cases, we are not presented here with special facts that point ineluctably to the conclusion that the victim’s apparently voluntary travel across state lines was, in reality, less than voluntary. Indeed, the government— in both its brief and oral argument before this panel — took the position that Miss Childers freely initiated the idea of a drive to Ohio and, most important, freely accepted Hughes’ accession to her request.