Court Opinion

ID: 9775506
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:01:04.406704+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:27.277460
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. While recognizing that substantial evidence may be based on circumstance, the majority opinion asserts there is no substantial evidence that the victim’s liberty was interfered with in excess of the restraint necessary to commit battery and theft and, therefore, substantial evidence of kidnapping is lacking. That analysis ignores significant circumstances from which the jury could have reasonably inferred that the victim’s liberty was substantially restrained beyond that incidental to the other offenses. Kidnapping has no requirement as to time or removal, only that there be a substantial interference with the victim’s liberty for one or more of the purposes specified in the statute. Jackson v. State, 290 Ark. 160, 717 S.W.2d 801 (1986); Cook v. State, 284 Ark. 333, 681 S.W.2d 378 (1984). Those include inflicting physical injury or engaging in sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity or sexual contact with the victim. Ark. Code Ann. § 5-1 l-102(a) (1987). Thus, it is “the quality and the nature of the restraint, rather than its duration, that determines whether kidnapping charges can be sustained.” Cook v. State, supra. In Cook, we cited with approval two cases in which the restraints involved in kidnapping were of less than five minutes — Commonwealth v. Burkett, 370 N.E.2d 1017 (Mass. App. 1977) and Rodriguez v. State, 646 S.W.2d 524 (Tex. App. 1 Dist. 1982). When this victim regained consciousness following a savage beating she was some fifteen miles away from the Fayetteville location she had been seeking. Her Ford van, wedding band and clothing were gone, except for her brassiere which was wrapped around her neck. Near where the victim found refuge was a muddy field where her underpants and tire impressions from the van were found. The rationale of the cases on which the majority rely — Summerlin v. State, 296 Ark. 347, 756 S.W.2d 908 (1988) and Shaw v. State, 304 Ark. 781, 882 S.W.2d 468 (1991) ■—rests on the constitutional impediment to punishing an accused twice for conduct which constitutes a single offense. See generally Cozzaglio v. State, 289 Ark. 33, 709 S.W.2d 70 (1986). But it was not necessary for the appellant to undress the victim in order to either beat her or rob her, nor is that conduct subsumed into either the battery or theft. It stands alone. It was, I submit, permissible under the proof for the jury to infer that this victim was either transported to other than her intended destination against her will or unnecessarily restrained in the process of being disrobed, or both. Nor is it or particular significance that the rape charge was dismissed. It is not necessary that the original objective of a kidnapping be completed. Once the kidnapper has undertaken the activity and the victim has been exposed to the attendant dangers, the act of kidnapping is complete. Cook v. State, supra.; Black v. State, 250 Ark. 604, 466 S.W.2d 463 (1971). Glaze, J., joins in this dissent.