If you have been arrested for the crime of Kidnapping, call experienced criminal defense lawyer Max Gorby at (323) 477-2819.

•  California Penal Code 207 PC – Kidnapping

California Penal Code 207 PC – California’s kidnapping law. (“(a) Every person who forcibly, or by any other means of instilling fear, steals or takes, or holds, detains, or arrests any person in this state, and carries the person into another country, state, or county, or into another part of the same county, is guilty of kidnapping. (b) Every person, who for the purpose of committing any act defined in Section 288, hires, persuades, entices, decoys, or seduces by false promises, misrepresentations, or the like, any child under the age of 14 years to go out of this country, state, or county, or into another part of the same county, is guilty of kidnapping. (c) Every person who forcibly, or by any other means of instilling fear, takes or holds, detains, or arrests any person, with a design to take the person out of this state, without having established a claim, according to the laws of the United States, or of this state, or who hires, persuades, entices, decoys, or seduces by false promises, misrepresentations, or the like, any person to go out of this state, or to be taken or removed therefrom, for the purpose and with the intent to sell that person into slavery or involuntary servitude, or otherwise to employ that person for his or her own use, or to the use of another, without the free will and consent of that persuaded person, is guilty of kidnapping. (d) Every person who, being out of this state, abducts or takes by force or fraud any person contrary to the law of the place where that act is committed, and brings, sends, or conveys that person within the limits of this state, and is afterwards found within the limits thereof, is guilty of kidnapping. (e) For purposes of those types of kidnapping requiring force, the amount of force required to kidnap an unresisting infant or child is the amount of physical force required to take and carry the child away a substantial distance for an illegal purpose or with an illegal intent. (f) Subdivisions (a) to (d), inclusive, do not apply to any of the following: (1) To any person who steals, takes, entices away, detains, conceals, or harbors any child under the age of 14 years, if that act is taken to protect the child from danger of imminent harm. (2) To any person acting under Section 834 or 837.”

California Penal Code 209 PC — Kidnapping for ransom, reward, or extortion, or to commit robbery or rape; punishment. (“(a) Any person who seizes, confines, inveigles, entices, decoys, abducts, conceals, kidnaps or carries away another person [thereby violating California’s kidnapping law] by any means whatsoever with intent to hold or detain, or who holds or detains, that person for ransom, reward or to commit extortion [under Penal Code 518 PC California’s extortion law] or to exact from another person any money or valuable thing, or any person who aids or abets any such act, is guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life without possibility of parole in cases in which any person subjected to any such act suffers death or bodily harm, or is intentionally confined in a manner which exposes that person to a substantial likelihood of death, or shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole in cases where no such person suffers death or bodily harm. (b)(1) Any person who kidnaps or carries away any individual to commit robbery [under Penal Code 211 PC California’s robbery law], [certain California sex crimes, including] rape [under Penal Code 261 PC California’s rape law], spousal rape [under Penal Code 262 PC California’s spousal rape law], oral copulation [under Penal Code 288a PC California’s oral copulation by force law], sodomy [under Penal Code 286 PC California’s illegal acts of sodomy law], or any violation of Section 264.1, 288 [under Penal Code 288 PC California’s lewd acts with a minor law], or 289, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole. (2) This subdivision shall only apply if the movement of the victim is beyond that merely incidental to the commission of, and increases the risk of harm to the victim over and above that necessarily present in, the intended underlying offense. (c) In all cases in which probation is granted, the court shall, except in unusual cases where the interests of justice would best be served by a lesser penalty, require as a condition of the probation that the person be confined in the county jail for 12 months. If the court grants probation without requiring the defendant to be confined in the county jail for 12 months, it shall specify its reason or reasons for imposing a lesser penalty. (d) Subdivision (b) shall not be construed to supersede or affect Section 667.61. A person may be charged with a violation of subdivision (b) and Section 667.61. However, a person may not be punished under subdivision (b) and Section 667.61 for the same act that constitutes a violation of both subdivision (b) and Section 667.61.”

Penal Code 209.5 PC — Kidnapping during commission of carjacking; punishment; exception; probation. (“(a) Any person who, during the commission of a carjacking [under Penal Code 215 PC California’s carjacking law] and in order to facilitate the commission of the carjacking, kidnaps another person who is not a principal in the commission of the carjacking shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole. (b) This section shall only apply if the movement of the victim is beyond that merely incidental to the commission of the carjacking [so as to constitute a separate violation of California’s kidnapping law], the victim is moved a substantial distance from the vicinity of the carjacking, and the movement of the victim increases the risk of harm to the victim over and above that necessarily present in the crime of carjacking itself. (c) In all cases in which probation is granted, the court shall, except in unusual cases where the interests of justice would best be served by a lesser penalty, require as a condition of the probation that the person be confined in the county jail for 12 months. If the court grants probation without requiring the defendant to be confined in the county jail for 12 months, it shall specify its reason or reasons for imposing a lesser penalty.”

California Penal Code 208 PC — Punishment for kidnapping; victim under 14 years of age; probation. (“(a) Kidnapping is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for three, five, or eight years. (b) If the person kidnapped is under 14 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime, the kidnapping is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for 5, 8, or 11 years. This subdivision is not applicable to the taking, detaining, or concealing, of a minor child by a biological parent, a natural father, as specified in Section 7611 of the Family Code, an adoptive parent, or a person who has been granted access to the minor child by a court order. (c) In all cases in which probation is granted, the court shall, except in unusual cases where the interests of justice would best be served by a lesser penalty, require as a condition of the probation that the person be confined in the county jail for 12 months. If the court grants probation without requiring the defendant to be confined in the county jail for 12 months, it shall specify its reason or reasons for imposing a lesser penalty.”

CALJIC 9.50 Kidnapping –No Other Underlying Crime. (“(Penal Code § 207, subdivision (a)) Defendant is accused [in Count[s] ] of having committed the crime of kidnapping, a violation of section 207, subdivision (a) of the Penal Code….California’s kidnapping law]. Every person who unlawfully [and with physical force [or] [by any [other] means of instilling fear], steals or takes, or holds, detains, or arrests another person and carries that person without [his] [her] consent] [compels any other person without [his] [her] consent and because of a reasonable apprehension of harm, to move] for a distance that is substantial in character, is guilty of the crime of kidnapping in violation of Penal Code section 207, subdivision (a). A movement that is only for a slight or trivial distance is not substantial in character. In determining whether a distance that is more than slight or trivial is substantial in character, you should consider the totality of the circumstances attending the movement [, including, but not limited to, [the actual distance moved] [,] [, or] whether the movement [increased the risk of harm above that which existed prior to the movement] [,] [, or] [decreased the likelihood of detection] [,] [, or] [increased both the danger inherent in a victim’s foreseeable attempt to escape and the attacker’s enhanced opportunity to commit additional crimes]]. [If an associated crime is involved, the movement also must be more than that which is incidental to the commission of the other crime.] An associated crime is any criminal act, whether charged or not, the defendant intends to commit where, in the course of its commission, the defendant also moves a victim by force or fear against his or her will.] [An implicit threat of arrest satisfies the force or fear element if the perpetrator’s conduct or statements caused the person threatened with arrest to believe that unless [he] [she] accompanied the perpetrator, the person would be forced to do so, and that person’s belief was objectively reasonable.] In order to prove this crime, each of the following elements must be proved: [1 A person was [unlawfully] moved by the use of physical force [, or by any other means of instilling fear];] [1 A person was [unlawfully] compelled by another person to move because of a reasonable apprehension of harm;] 2 The movement of the other person was without [his] [her] consent; and 3 The movement of the other person in distance was substantial in character.”

CALJIC 9.57 Kidnapping of Infant or Child — Amount of Force Required. (“The amount of force required to kidnap an unresisting infant or child [in violation of California’s kidnapping laws] is the amount of force required to take and carry the child away a substantial distance for an illegal purpose or with an illegal intent. The People have the burden to prove that an infant or child incapable of consenting was taken or moved by force as defined above. If you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the taking or movement was by force, you must find in favor of the defendant on that issue.”

CALJIC 9.56 — No Kidnapping When Free Consent. (“When one consents to accompany another, there is no kidnapping [under California’s kidnapping laws] so long as the condition of consent exists. To consent, a person must: 1 Act freely and voluntarily and not under the influence of threats, force, or duress; 2 Have knowledge that [he] [she] was being physically moved; and 3 Possess sufficient mental capacity to make an intelligent choice whether to be physically moved by the other person [or persons].”

CALJIC 9.58 Kidnapping — Belief as to Consent. (“It is a defense to the crime of [simple] kidnapping that a defendant lacked general criminal intent. There is no general criminal intent if a defendant entertained a reasonable and good faith belief that the person alleged to have been kidnapped voluntarily consented to accompany the defendant and to the movement involved in the purported kidnapping. If from all the evidence you have a reasonable doubt that the defendant had general criminal intent at or during the time of the movement, you must find [him] [her] not guilty of kidnapping [under California’s kidnapping laws].”

•  RECENT CASES

People v. Clark, S045078, SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA, 52 Cal. 4th 856; 2011 Cal. LEXIS 8769, August 29, 2011, Filed, Reported at People v. Clark (Royal), 2011 Cal. LEXIS 9347 (Cal., Aug. 29, 2011)

When, on appeal, the evidence is determined to be insufficient to support a special circumstance finding, the judgment of death need not be reversed if the defendant suffered no prejudice. Prejudice results if the special circumstance was necessary to make the defendant eligible for the death penalty. But even if another special circumstance made the defendant eligible for the death penalty, the defendant may still have suffered prejudice if the jury’s penalty verdict was influenced by evidence pertaining to the invalid special circumstance that was not otherwise admissible.