Court Opinion

ID: 9471096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:25:06.880443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:16.307958
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I
Presuming that the kidnapping statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1201, is construed in the way Judge Gordon’s opinion construes it, I concur in his opinion in all respects, for I think there was not only ample, but a great abundance of, evidence that Hughes intended to kidnap this young girl from the moment he first saw her and indicated his interest in her and in the events which followed by blowing his horn at her. The jury was fully entitled to believe that his relation of the incident, including his alibi, was not true in all but insignificant details, as there was evidence it was not in many.
II
It will serve no useful purpose to further elaborate at length on the legislative history of the statute which we considered in United States v. Lewis, 662 F.2d 1087 (4th Cir.1981), cert. den. 455 U.S. 955, 102 S.Ct. 1464, 71 L.Ed.2d 672 (1982), in which we construed the 1972 amendments to § 1201(a).
Initially, I call attention to the fact that the wording of the statute was changed.
Prior to 1972 the operative part of the statute with which we are dealing here provided that:
“Whoever knowingly transports in interstate ... commerce, any person who has been unlawfully ... kidnapped.... ”
Following the 1972 amendments, the same part of the statute provides that:
“Whoever unlawfully ... kidnaps ... any person ... when ... the person is willfully transported in interstate ... commerce.”
Thus, prior to the amendments, the statute required a victim who has been kidnapped; following the amendments, the statute requires a victim who is willfully transported. The former statute may easily be construed to require a kidnapping prior to interstate transportation. The present statute only requires the present interstate transportation of a kidnapped person. This change of wording is entirely consistent with the way I think the statute should now be read.
Briefly, as noted, in 1972 Congress rewrote the federal kidnapping statute and added three alternative bases of federal jurisdiction over kidnapping. See Pub.L. No. 92-539, § 201, 86 Stat. 1070 (1972). In commenting on this change, the Senate Committee Report said that the amendments were intended to change the kidnapping law “to make the thrust of the offense the kidnapping itself rather than the interstate transportation of the kidnapped person.” S.Rep. No. 1105, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1972 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 4316, 4317-18. In Lewis, we considered the legislative history of the 1972 amendments and held that the federal kidnapping statute as amended creates one substantive crime of kidnapping with four alternative federal jurisdictional bases. Id. at 1089-90. Stated differently, we interpreted the 1972 amendments as separating the crime of kidnapping from the federal jurisdictional bases for prosecution. Id. at 1090.
The holding in Lewis is, I believe, controlling in this case. Because interstate transportation of the victim is intended to be merely a basis for federal jurisdiction rather than an integral part of the substantive crime, there is no present basis for reading into the statute a requirement that the intent to kidnap be formed before the victim is taken across the state line. In my view, the statute requires not more than that the intent to kidnap be formed, or be present, and the kidnapping occur (if it has not already occurred) some time during the journey that involves the crossing of a state line. It is not disputed that there was *243sufficient evidence for the jury to find that at the cemetery Hughes intentionally seized and held Penny Childers against her will, and beat her, and that their presence at the cemetery was part of their interstate journey. I therefore would affirm the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction on that account alone.