Court Opinion

ID: 9484103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:40:38.147349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:06.693279
License: Public Domain

*154K.K. HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
“The Parental Rights of Defendant Grace Clark [Sheek] and Defendant Rex Allen York to Amanda York and Michael York are hereby terminated, henceforth and forever.” Hopkins v. S.C. Dept. of Social Services, Case No. 89-DR-21-231 (Family Court of the 12th Jud’l Cir., S.C. Nov. 22, 1989). Grace Ann Sheek was not embroiled in a custody battle with Amanda’s or Michael’s father(s) or with some other third party. In August 1991, Sheek had no greater legal claim on the children than I did. Nevertheless, under the banners of plain-meaning and lenity, the majority holds that this stranger may abduct two children without transgressing the Lindbergh Act. I cannot accept such an anomalous result, and I dissent.
The legislative history of the Lindbergh Act may be scant, but what is available does not support the interpretation of the parental-exemption provision adopted by the majority. Congressman Dyer’s explanation — that the original statute was not intended to include any “parent ... taking possession of his or her own child, even though the order of the court was violated and it was a technical kidnapping” (maj. op. at 152) — clearly indicates an intent to keep federal law out of the realm of divorce and custody disputes between parents with existing legal ties to the child. The 1934 amendment merely clarified this. See Crandon v. United States, 494 U.S. 152, 157-58, 110 S.Ct. 997, 1001, 108 L.Ed.2d 132 (1990) (“In determining the meaning of the statute, we look not only to the particular statutory language, but to the design of the statute as a whole and to its object and policy.”). Grace Ann Sheek, however, was not on the losing end of a custody decree vis-a-vis the children’s father(s); the state court order irrevocably rendered her a legal stranger to the child. Her crime was no “technical violation.” *
A criminal law is not to be read expansively to include what is not plainly embraced within the language of the statute, since the purpose fairly to apprise men of the boundaries of the prohibited action would then be defeated; but there is no canon against using common sense in reading a criminal law, so that strained and technical constructions do not defeat its purpose by creating exceptions from or loopholes in it.” Kordel v. United States, 335 U.S. 345, 349-50, 69 S.Ct. 106, 109-110, 93 L.Ed. 52 (1948) (citations omitted). The Lindbergh Act enables the vast resources of the federal government to be mobilized against the heinous crime of kidnapping. See Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455, 462-63, 66 S.Ct. 233, 236-37, 90 L.Ed. 198 (1946). Now, at least in Maryland, the Virginias and the Carolinas, the federal government has been rendered powerless to punish abductions of children by persons who have forfeited the right to be called a parent.
I would reverse and remand with directions to reinstate the indictment.

The South Carolina kidnapping statute was apparently modelled on the Lindbergh Act; it too exempts the parent of a kidnapped child. See S.C.Code Ann. § 16-3-910 (Law.Co-op.1976). Armed with a copy of the court’s opinion, Sheek will presumably be able to abduct Michael and Amanda with impunity.