
§§ 1201 et seq., 1751 et seq.).Ī person who is convicted of kidnapping is usually sentenced to prison for a certain number of years. territories, kidnapping on the high seas and in the air, and kidnapping of government officials (18 U.S.C.A. Other federal kidnapping statutes prohibit kidnapping in U.S. This presumption may be rebutted with evidence to the contrary. The act provides that if a victim is not released within 24 hours after being abducted, a court may presume that the victim was transported across state lines. Lindbergh, a celebrated aviator and Air Force colonel whose baby was kidnapped and killed in 1932. The Lindbergh Act was named for Charles A.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, states began to redefine kidnapping, most notably eliminating the requirement of interstate transport.Īt the federal level, Congress passed the Lindbergh Act in 1932 to prohibit interstate kidnapping (48 Stat. Originally, the crime of kidnapping was defined as the unlawful and non-consensual transportation of a person from one country to another. Kidnapping laws in the United States derive from the Common Law of kidnapping that was developed by courts in England.
#ABDUCTION MEANING CODE#
These purposes include gaining a ransom or reward facilitating the commission of a felony or a flight after the commission of a felony terrorizing or inflicting bodily injury on the victim or a third person and interfering with a governmental or political function (Model Penal Code § 212.1). Under the Model Penal Code (a set of exemplary criminal rules fashioned by the American Law Institute), kidnapping occurs when any person is unlawfully and non-consensually asported and held for certain purposes. Generally, kidnapping occurs when a person, without lawful authority, physically asports (i.e., moves) another person without that other person's consent, with the intent to use the abduction in connection with some other nefarious objective. Most state and federal kidnapping statutes define the term kidnapping vaguely, and courts fill in the details.

The law of kidnapping is difficult to define with precision because it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The crime of unlawfully seizing and carrying away a person by force or Fraud, or seizing and detaining a person against his or her will with an intent to carry that person away at a later time.
