Required Criminal Purpose

The physical-act routes and the unlawful-means test describe what the actor did and how the victim came to go or stay. Section 212.1 adds a third requirement that looks into the actor's mind: the qualifying removal or confinement must be carried out with one of four listed purposes.¹ The statute names them in a list, and each receives its own section below:

holding the victim for ransom or reward, or as a shield or hostage;
facilitating the commission of any felony, or flight after a felony;
inflicting bodily injury on the victim or another, or terrorizing either; and
interfering with the performance of any governmental or political function.²

This clause is a mental-state element, and the Code's general provisions on culpability explain why it has that character. The Code provides that a person is not guilty of an offense unless he acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently, as the law requires, with respect to each material element of the offense.³ The Code also counts as an element anything that establishes the required kind of culpability, so the purpose clause is an element the prosecution must prove, just as it must prove the distance or the means.⁴ The word purpose carries the Code's most demanding meaning. A person acts purposely as to the nature of his conduct or a result when it is his conscious object to engage in that conduct or cause that result.⁵ Applied here, the actor must be working toward ransom, toward a felony, toward injury or terror, or toward obstruction of government. An actor who only foresees that a captive may be hurt or frightened, without aiming at that outcome, has not acted with the purpose the clause names.

Because a conscious object is something the actor is trying to bring about, the clause asks what the actor was aiming at when the restraint began, and not whether the aim was reached. The reason for tying the offense to an aim comes from what the four purposes have in common. Each one names a further harm that the restraint serves: extracting payment, shielding the actor, committing or escaping from a felony, hurting or frightening someone, or obstructing government. The first-degree penalty therefore falls on restraint that serves another wrong, which excludes forcible movements that serve none. Without the clause, the physical-act routes alone would have to separate kidnapping from lesser restraints, and those routes turn on fact-sensitive words such as substantial. A judgment that a drive was long enough or a room isolated enough would then decide, by itself, whether the actor faces a first-degree felony, whatever the actor meant to accomplish. The purpose requirement supplies a second, independent question about blame, which keeps liability tied to intent.

Hypothetical Illustration

A man forces a woman into his car and drives her across the county, intending to demand money from her family for her return. Force makes the removal unlawful, the distance is substantial, and holding her for ransom is a listed purpose, so every element is met.⁶

Change only the aim. The man forces the woman into his car and drives her across the county, but his only goal is to lecture her about a debt and then let her go, and he intends neither harm nor fear. The physical act and the unlawful means are the same, yet no listed purpose motivated him, so the conduct is not kidnapping under the Code.

Now change the actor and leave the outcome unfinished. A woman seizes a man outside his office and holds him in a remote cabin for two days, planning to demand money from his employer in exchange for his release. Police find them before she places the call. The demand was never made, but holding him for ransom was her conscious object from the start, so the purpose element is satisfied.

The first two scenes differ in one fact, the actor's aim. Force, distance, and the victim are identical, so the qualifying removal and the unlawful means are proved in both, and only the first man was acting toward a listed purpose. The third scene shows that the clause looks to aim rather than outcome. A restraint that has no listed purpose is not kidnapping under the Code, though it may still fall under a lesser restraint offense such as false imprisonment, which is covered elsewhere.

The purpose requirement is a feature of the Code's version of the offense, and other statutes are built differently. A federal court of appeals comparing statutes explained that, under the Code, "kidnapping does not occur under the Model Penal Code absent one of the specifically enumerated purposes."⁷ The same court added that most states have rejected a specified-purpose requirement for kidnapping.⁸ In a state that has dropped the requirement, other elements do the work that the purpose clause does here, and the last section of this chapter returns to that contrast.

Under the Code, the common exam error is to treat a forcible, lengthy abduction as kidnapping by itself. A stem that describes a long drive, a locked door, and a frightened victim has established the first two elements at most. Before calling the offense complete, ask what the actor was trying to accomplish, and look for ransom, a felony or flight, injury or terror, or interference with government. If the stem supplies no aim from the list, the purpose element fails, however serious the restraint was.

Ransom, Reward, Shield, or Hostage

The first listed purpose, in subsection (a), is to remove or confine the victim "to hold for ransom or reward, or as a shield or hostage."¹⁰ That phrase packs four uses into one clause, and they read best as variations on a single idea: the actor treats the captive as leverage. In each use the actor wants something that the captivity can obtain or protect, and the victim's safety becomes the instrument for getting it. The clause supplies only the final element, the aim behind the restraint, so a qualifying removal or confinement and unlawful means must already be present before it matters.¹¹

The four words differ in how the leverage is applied. Ransom is the familiar form: the actor holds a person and demands payment from someone who cares what happens to that person, so release becomes the price. Reward widens the idea to any benefit the actor expects to gain by holding the person, which means the clause does not depend on whether the actor ever uses the word ransom. A shield uses the captive differently. The actor places the victim between himself and danger, so that anyone who would stop the actor must risk harming the victim. A hostage is held as leverage against other people, and the actor may want no money at all, only a promise that someone will do or refrain from doing something, with the captive's safety as the guarantee. Money, protection, and compliance are different things to want, yet each depends on the same move of making a person the bargaining chip.

That common thread also explains why these uses sit on the list of purposes that raise a restraint to a first-degree felony. A simple detention interferes with one person's liberty. When the actor turns the detainee into currency or armor, a second harm appears: the captive's welfare now depends on how a third party responds, and the actor is counting on that dependence to pressure the third party. A shield adds a more direct danger, because the victim is placed in the path of whatever force the actor is trying to avoid. The structure of the clause therefore tracks culpability. The actor who exploits a person as an instrument is more blameworthy than one who merely holds a person, and the statute reserves the heavier penalty for the first.

Hypothetical Illustration

An adult seizes a child and keeps the child in a house while demanding payment from the child's parents. Force makes the removal unlawful, and the child is held for ransom, so purpose (a) is met.

Fleeing police after a robbery, a suspect grabs a bystander, forces him along, and holds him in front of the suspect's own body. The suspect wants no payment and makes no demand, yet the bystander is being held as a shield, so purpose (a) is met here as well.

A woman seizes a landlord's adult son and confines him in a remote cabin, telling the landlord that the son will be released only if the landlord withdraws an eviction notice. No money is sought, but the son is held as a hostage to pressure someone else, so purpose (a) is met.

Now remove the leverage. A man forces an adult cousin into his car and drives her across the county only so that she will miss a family wedding. He demands nothing from anyone and uses her for no other end. Force and distance may make the movement unlawful and qualifying, but she is not being held for ransom, reward, or as a shield or hostage, so purpose (a) fails.

The first three scenes share one feature: in each, the captive is the means by which the actor gets something from another person or avoids something that other persons would otherwise do. The last scene has the same force and a substantial distance, and it differs on that single point. The cousin is the object of the actor's wish, since he wants her absent, and she is not the lever for obtaining anything from anyone. Because the purpose element looks to the actor's conscious object and not to the result, the demand in the ransom and hostage scenes need not be communicated before the offense is complete, and the shield scene does not require that the bystander be injured.¹²

Two cautions follow. The first is that the purposes can overlap, since the suspect who holds a bystander as a shield is also moving him to facilitate flight after a felony, which is purpose (b). The clause requires only one listed purpose, so an overlap does no harm and the analysis can rest on whichever the facts show most clearly. The second is the mistake of looking only for a money demand. A student who finds no ransom note may discard purpose (a), when shield and hostage show that the clause reaches leverage that involves no money. The question to ask is whether the victim was held as the instrument for obtaining or protecting something, and if the stem shows only a forcible movement with no such use, purpose (a) is not established.

Facilitating a Felony or Flight

Subsection (b) names the second listed purpose. A qualifying, unlawful removal or confinement is kidnapping when the actor carries it out "to facilitate commission of any felony or flight thereafter."¹⁴ Purpose (a) treats the captive as leverage over someone else, and purpose (b) treats the captive as a tool for another crime or for an escape. To facilitate is to make something easier to accomplish, so the actor's conscious object must be that the restraint help a felony get done, or help the actor get away once it is done. As with every listed purpose, this clause supplies only the final element, so a qualifying removal or confinement and unlawful means must already be established before it matters.¹⁵

The clause has two halves, and each rests on its own logic. The first half reaches restraint used to commit a felony, and the word "any" means the statute does not limit which felonies count.¹⁶ The felony is ordinarily a different crime from the kidnapping, such as a robbery or a sexual assault, and because the clause looks to the actor's aim, the other felony does not have to be completed for the purpose to exist. The second half reaches flight, and its reason is practical. A felony may be over by the time the victim is seized, but a captive can still slow pursuit or deter pursuers, so the actor who grabs a driver or a bystander after the crime is using the person as an instrument of escape. The word "thereafter" therefore covers a restraint that begins after the felony is finished.¹⁷

The same structure explains why the subsection attracts a first-degree penalty. When a restraint serves another serious crime or an escape from it, the victim suffers a harm separate from the underlying felony: the victim has been taken out of the place where the crime might have stopped and made part of the actor's plan. The statutory word "felony" limits that reasoning to serious offenses. If a purpose to facilitate any offense at all were enough, every forcible movement that accompanied a trivial crime would become a first-degree felony. A purpose to facilitate only an offense graded as a misdemeanor therefore does not satisfy subsection (b).

Hypothetical Illustration

After robbing a store, a gunman forces the clerk into the getaway car and drives off with him to escape the police. The robbery is finished, but the movement is meant to carry the gunman away from it, so the aim is flight after a felony and purpose (b) is met, assuming force makes the removal unlawful and the distance is substantial.

A man forces a woman to drive with him to a remote ATM, a substantial distance away, so that he can rob her there. The robbery has not yet occurred, and the movement is meant to bring it about, so the aim is to facilitate a felony and purpose (b) is met.

Now change only the target offense. A woman forces a store clerk into her car and drives across town so that she can commit a petty theft that the jurisdiction grades as a misdemeanor. Force and distance are the same as before, and she has no other aim. The only crime she is advancing is a misdemeanor, so purpose (b) fails.

The first two scenes show the two halves of the clause, one looking forward to a felony and the other looking back from it. The third scene matches the second in its force and distance and differs on one fact, the grade of the offense the restraint serves. That single difference decides whether subsection (b) is satisfied. As the shield example in the previous section showed, one restraint can satisfy more than one listed purpose, so the gunman who holds a bystander in front of him may meet both (a) and (b), and the analysis can rest on whichever purpose the facts show most clearly.

This subsection is where kidnapping most often runs into robbery, and the two crimes must be proved separately. Robbery is a felony, and a robber almost always uses force, so purpose (b) is easy to find on the facts. That makes it tempting to stop there, but robbery is not automatically kidnapping, because the physical-act element still has to be shown on its own terms.¹⁸ A robber who orders a clerk at gunpoint to open the register has used force and has a felony in mind, yet nothing in that conduct is a removal from the place of business, a removal a substantial distance, or a confinement for a substantial period in a place of isolation. Without that movement or confinement, the first-degree kidnapping offense is not made out, however clearly the felony purpose appears. The question to ask is whether the actor moved or held the victim in a qualifying way and did so in order to advance a felony or an escape from one.

Injury or Terror

The third listed purpose, in subsection (c), is to remove or confine the victim "to inflict bodily injury on or to terrorize the victim or another."²⁰ Purposes (a) and (b) treat the captive as a means to something else, whether leverage over third parties or help with a felony or an escape. Purpose (c) differs because the harm itself is the actor's goal. The actor wants someone hurt or frightened, and the restraint is the way of getting that done. As with every listed purpose, the clause supplies only the final element, so a qualifying removal or confinement and unlawful means must already be established before it matters.²¹

The clause contains two alternative aims and one reach. To inflict bodily injury is to cause physical harm to a person's body, and to terrorize is to subject a person to intense fear. Either aim is enough, and the actor need not intend both. The reach lies in the words "or another," which mean that the person the actor intends to hurt or frighten need not be the person seized.²² The reason is that a restraint undertaken to injure or frighten does a harm that goes beyond the loss of liberty, and that harm is no smaller when the captive is the route to someone else's suffering. Without the extension, an actor who seizes one person precisely in order to wound or terrify a relative of that person would fall outside the clause, even though the culpability is the same as in the case where the captive is the target.

Like the other purposes, this one looks to the actor's aim rather than to what actually happened.²³ The statute asks what the actor was trying to accomplish, so a captor who intends to beat a victim satisfies the clause even if the victim is rescued or released before any blow lands. The same logic applies to terror: the question is whether the actor meant to frighten, not whether the intended person ever learned of the seizure. A court looking for purpose (c) therefore examines the actor's conscious object, and it does not wait for proof that the injury or the fear was achieved.

Hypothetical Illustration

An abductor forces a man into a truck, drives him to a deserted field miles away, and beats him there. Force makes the removal unlawful, the distance is substantial, and the aim of the movement was to inflict bodily injury on the person seized, so purpose (c) is met.

A man seizes a woman at gunpoint and holds her in a locked room, intending to terrorize her husband by making him fear for her. The woman is not the person the actor wants to frighten, but the clause reaches terror aimed at another, so purpose (c) is met. The same facts may also support a hostage purpose under (a), and the analysis can rest on either.

Now remove the harmful aim. A friend falsely tells a man that a colleague is waiting at a restaurant on the far side of town, so that he will ride there with her. She is planning a surprise party and intends neither harm nor fear. The lie is deception, so the means are unlawful, and the distance is substantial, yet no listed purpose is present. The conduct is not kidnapping under the Code.

Keep the same lie and the same ride, and change only the friend's aim: she wants the man alone at the restaurant so that an accomplice can beat him there. Deception and distance are unchanged, but the aim is now to inflict bodily injury, so purpose (c) is met.

The first two scenes show how far the clause extends: in one the intended harm falls on the person seized, and in the other it falls on someone else, and both satisfy subsection (c). The last two scenes are the more instructive pair. The deception, the distance, and the victim are the same in both, and the friend's aim is the only fact that moves, so the surprise-party scene shows what remains when the physical act and the unlawful means are proved and the purpose is missing. Because the elements must all coincide, a missing purpose defeats the charge no matter how clearly the other elements appear.

The error to avoid on an exam is requiring the injury or fear to be aimed at the person seized, which reads the words "or another" out of the clause.²⁴ A stem in which an actor holds a child, a spouse, or an employee in order to hurt or frighten someone else has supplied purpose (c), provided the movement or confinement and the unlawful means are also present. The opposite mistake is to infer a harmful purpose from the deception alone. A lie that gets the victim to travel shows the means, and it says nothing about whether the actor meant to injure or frighten anyone.

Interfering With Government

The fourth listed purpose, in subsection (d), is to remove or confine the victim "to interfere with the performance of any governmental or political function."²⁶ Purposes (a) through (c) all concern what the actor wants from the victim or from someone close to the victim: leverage over another person, help with a crime or an escape, or harm. Purpose (d) points at the public instead. The actor's conscious object is to stop or disrupt something the government or the political system is doing, and the captive is the route to that result. As with every listed purpose, the clause supplies only the final element, so a qualifying removal or confinement and unlawful means must already be established before it matters.²⁷

The clause asks a single question: what is the actor trying to interfere with? The answer must be a governmental or political function, which is a public activity, and the text gives no reach to the ordinary business affairs of private persons.²⁸ The reason lies in who is harmed. When an official is kept from performing a public task, everyone who depends on that task is affected along with the captive, so the restraint attacks the machinery of government as well as the individual. That wider harm justifies treating the restraint as kidnapping even when the actor wants no ransom and intends no injury. A restraint aimed at a private matter lacks that public dimension, so it needs one of the other three purposes to qualify. Like the other purposes, this one looks to the actor's aim, so the interference need not succeed for the purpose to exist.²⁹

The two scenes match in force, distance, and the captive's loss of liberty, and they differ on one fact, the nature of the function the actor aimed to block. Certifying an election is a public act, and attending a contract negotiation is a private one. That single difference decides whether subsection (d) is satisfied, which shows that the clause turns on the character of the target and not on how serious the actor's conduct toward the captive was.

Students sometimes go wrong by reasoning from the victim's occupation. The clause says nothing about who the victim must be, and it asks what the actor aimed to interfere with.³⁰ A victim who holds a public job has not for that reason been seized to interfere with a public function, so the stem must show that the actor's aim was to stop a governmental or political function. When the stem shows only a private objective and no other listed purpose, the kidnapping offense is not established, because the purpose element is the last of the elements that must coincide.