U.S. v. Horton

• Decision Date: 10 March 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-4681.,01-4681.
• Citation: 321 F.3d 476
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James HORTON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

321 F.3d 476

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James HORTON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 01-4681.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued December 6, 2002.

Decided March 10, 2003.

ARGUED: Thomas J. Saunders, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Deborah A. Johnston, Assistant United States Attorney, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Thomas M. DiBiagio, United States Attorney, Odessa P. Jackson, Assistant United States Attorney, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee.

Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and MICHAEL and KING, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Chief Judge WILKINS wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge KING joined. Judge MICHAEL wrote a dissenting opinion.

OPINION

WILKINS, Chief Judge:

James Horton appeals his convictions for kidnapping resulting in death, see 18 U.S.C.A. § 1201(a)(1) (West 2000), and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, see 18 U.S.C.A. § 1201(c) (West 2000). Finding no error, we affirm.

I.

In late November 1998, Stephen Satcher visited his cousin Daniel Stancil and asked Stancil to help him bring some "bodies" from Maryland to North Carolina in exchange for a quantity of cocaine. J.A. 69. Stancil in turn asked his friend, Horton, if he would assist, and Horton agreed. Once Stancil and Horton arrived in Maryland, Satcher informed them that the person whose body they were to dispose of was Jovita Dickerson, the still-living mother of Satcher's child. Stancil and Horton then agreed to assist in kidnapping Dickerson.

On the afternoon of December 4, 1998, Horton, Satcher, and Stancil drove to a parking lot in Bowie, Maryland, and waited for Dickerson to emerge from her workplace. Horton, armed with a toy firearm, forced Dickerson into her vehicle and held her there while Satcher drove them to Satcher's stepfather's house in Cheverly, Maryland. When Stancil arrived, he found Horton, Satcher, and Dickerson in the basement; Dickerson was on her knees bent over a couch with her hands tied behind her back. Stancil immediately returned upstairs, where he heard choking sounds coming from the basement. Horton joined Stancil upstairs a few minutes later and reported that Satcher had tried to choke Dickerson.

After Satcher and Stancil were unsuccessful in a second attempt to kill Dickerson, Satcher instructed Horton to "finish her off." Id. at 117. Horton then went down to the basement for two to three minutes, after which he returned upstairs and said he "was finished." Id. at 118. He and Satcher then carried Dickerson from the basement and placed her in the trunk of her vehicle. Stancil later stated that at that point "she looked dead." Id. at 194. Stancil and Horton then drove the vehicle to North Carolina, where they stayed in a hotel for the night. The next morning, after determining that their victim was in fact dead, they set the vehicle on fire in a field in Wake County with Dickerson's body still in the trunk. Dickerson's vehicle and her body were discovered later the same morning.

II.

The Federal Kidnapping Act establishes criminal penalties for a person who "unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or otherwise any person... when ... the person is willfully transported in interstate ... commerce, regardless of whether the person was alive when transported across a State boundary if the person was alive when the transportation began." 18 U.S.C.A. § 1201(a).¹

A.

Horton argues that "the transportation" of Dickerson commenced when her body was put in the trunk of her vehicle at Satcher's stepfather's house in Cheverly, Maryland, and therefore no violation of § 1201(a)(1) occurred because Dickerson was already dead at that point. He further alleges that the jury instructions given by the district court wrongfully precluded him from presenting this defense.²

We review de novo the correctness of jury charges regarding the elements of an offense. See United States v. Ellis, 121 F.3d 908, 923 (4th Cir.1997). In so doing, we must give the applicable statute its plain meaning. See United States Nat'l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 454, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993). And, in order to determine the plain meaning of a statute, we must consider its "language, structure, and purpose." United States v. Ehsan, 163 F.3d 855, 858 (4th Cir.1998). If after such consideration we are left with a "grievous ambiguity or uncertainty" in the meaning of the statute, the rule of lenity requires us to adopt the construction most favorable to the defendant. Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 463, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991) (internal quotation marks omitted).

The statutory language in question here is ambiguous when viewed outside the context of the purpose of the statute. It is apparent that "the transportation" in § 1201(a) refers to the only transportation previously referenced in the statute, namely interstate transportation. However, the statutory language does not clarify whether, when a kidnapper moves his victim after abducting her and then stops at some point before transporting her out of the state, "the transportation" includes only the last leg of the journey or all of the movement from the scene of the abduction across the state border. Nor does the structure of the statute suggest the correct interpretation.

We therefore turn to the purpose of the statute. The Federal Kidnapping Act was promulgated to address an increasing number of interstate kidnappings and the problem of kidnappers taking their victims across state lines, to places where state law enforcement officers had no authority to investigate the crimes and pursue the criminals. See Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455, 462-63, 66 S.Ct. 233, 90 L.Ed. 198 (1946). Congress' authority to address this problem falls under its power to prevent the misuse of channels of interstate or foreign commerce. See Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146, 150, 91 S.Ct. 1357, 28 L.Ed.2d 686 (1971); United States v. Toledo, 985 F.2d 1462, 1466 (10th Cir.1993); cf. Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 432, 438-39, 45 S.Ct. 345, 69 L.Ed. 699 (1925) (holding that prohibition on interstate transportation of stolen automobiles is within Commerce Clause power in part because it helps prevent criminals from using channels of interstate commerce to move stolen property outside of the jurisdiction of state law authorities and to conceal their crimes). Congress amended the statute in 1972, expanding its scope. See Act for the Protection of Foreign Officials and Official Guests of the United States, Pub.L. No. 92-539, § 201, 86 Stat. 1070 (1972). As the statute was amended, interstate transportation of the victim became "merely a basis for federal jurisdiction rather than an integral part of the substantive crime." United States v. Wills, 234 F.3d 174, 176 (4th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks omitted); see S.Rep. No. 92-1105 (1972), reprinted in 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4316, 4317-18. As a result of that change, courts have held that a defendant need not even realize he has left the state of abduction in order for the interstate transportation element to be satisfied. See, e.g., United States v. Duncan, 855 F.2d 1528, 1536-38 (11th Cir.1988); see also United States v. Darby, 37 F.3d 1059, 1067 (4th Cir.1994) ("Numerous cases have held that criminal statutes based on the government's interest in regulating interstate commerce do not generally require that an offender have knowledge of the interstate nexus of his actions.").

The statute was again amended in 1998 to provide that the interstate element is satisfied when a person is willfully transported in interstate commerce "regardless of whether the person was alive when transported across a State boundary if the person was alive when the transportation began." Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, Pub.L. No. 105-314, § 702(a), 112 Stat. 2974, 2987 (1998). Prior to the amendment, courts had held that the government was required to prove that the kidnapping victim was alive when the victim crossed a state line. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 508 F.2d 1271, 1273 (4th Cir.1975). It is apparent that in passing the 1998 amendment, Congress recognized the difficulty of proving the exact events that took place once a kidnapper was "on the move" with his victim, and sought to relieve the burden on the government of proving these events.

Consideration of the purposes behind § 1201 and its amendments demonstrates the incorrectness of Horton's interpretation of the statute. There is no basis for the proposition that interruptions between the commencement of movement of the victim and the crossing of a state line affect when the interstate transportation commenced, even when the path from the place of abduction to the state line is not straight. Were we to rule otherwise, we would thwart Congress' attempt to relieve the government from proving the specific events that occurred during a kidnapper's movement of his victim. We would force the government in every federal kidnapping case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the kidnappers did not kill their victim during a significant pause in their travel or on a circuitous path to the state line. This would be at odds with Congress' goal of preventing kidnappers from misusing interstate commerce channels to avoid responsibility for their kidnappings.

Consider the following hypothetical: The government introduces evidence showing only that Kidnapper grabbed Victim and drove off with her and that her body was found two days later in a neighboring state. Certainly this is the quintessential case that the federal kidnapping statute is designed to address. Horton's interpretation, however, could prevent a successful prosecution in such a case because the government could not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Kidnapper did not stop somewhere within the state where the abduction occurred,...