Boris Edember DELGADO-HERNANDEZ, Petitioner, v. Eric H. HOLDER Jr., Attorney General, Respondent.
No. 08-70789.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Submitted Oct. 2, 2012. Filed Oct. 9, 2012.
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Tony West, Assistant Attorney General, Donald E. Keener, Deputy Director, and Robert N. Markle, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, Washington, D.C., for the respondent.
Before: MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS, M. MARGARET McKEOWN and JAY S. BYBEE, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
PER CURIAM:
Boris Edember Delgado-Hernandez (“Delgado“) seeks review of a final order of removal following the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA“) determination that his conviction for attempted kidnapping under
BACKGROUND
Delgado, a citizen of El Salvador, was lawfully admitted to the United States on July 23, 2001, and became a lawful permanent resident in 2003. He pled guilty to the attempted kidnapping of his cousin on April 12, 2006 under
We have jurisdiction under
ANALYSIS
The sole issue on appeal is whether Delgado‘s conviction for attempted kidnapping is a crime of violence, thus making him removable as an aggravated felon. An “aggravated felony” under
(a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or
(b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.
Under
The government has at its disposal three possible ways to demonstrate that
A. FORCE ELEMENT UNDER § 16(a)
In determining whether an offense qualifies as an aggravated felony under
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.
Our analysis on this point begins and ends with the plain text of the statute. Because kidnapping under
B. SUBSTANTIAL RISK OF FORCE UNDER § 16(b)
The analysis under
Before diving into the commentary on kidnapping statutes, we step back to consider first principles, especially the evaluation of risk in crime of violence statutes. Under the categorical approach, we consider whether the elements of
Our approach in Lonczak strongly suggests that in the ordinary case the force or fear contemplated in
However, the addition of
Michele D. itself involved such a risk, when a “disturbed, emotionally hurt, and tearful” 15-year old, who had recently suffered a miscarriage, absconded with an infant temporarily in her charge, was accosted by a third party trespassing “in a dark alleyway,” and was turned over to the police soon after. 128 Cal.Rptr.2d 92, 59 P.3d at 166-67. No force was actually involved but force remained a substantial risk from the emotionally distraught minor. Similarly, the kidnapping cases upon which Michele D. relies, some decided pre-Lonczak, involved a substantial risk of force, and sometimes, actual force. See People v. Hill, 23 Cal.4th 853, 98 Cal. Rptr.2d 254, 3 P.3d 898, 899 (2000) (car jacking involving rape of mother); Parnell v. Superior Court of Alameda Cnty., 119 Cal.App.3d 392, 173 Cal.Rptr. 906, 912 (1981) (“One cannot imagine a more threatening situation: A seven-year-old youngster in a moving automobile under
The approach of other courts with respect to comparable kidnapping statutes—specifically the federal kidnapping statute—also lends support to our conclusion that kidnapping by force or fear ordinarily involves a risk of violence. The federal kidnapping statute has no force requirement, and provides merely that “[w]hoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person, except in the case of a minor by the parent thereof” shall be punished in accordance with the law.
Admittedly, Rodriguez-Moreno did not squarely hold that federal kidnapping is a crime of violence. But see United States v. Montero-Camargo, 208 F.3d 1122, 1132 n. 17 (9th Cir.2000) (“Supreme Court dicta have a weight that is greater than ordinary judicial dicta as prophecy of what that Court might hold; accordingly, we do not blandly shrug them off because they were not a holding.“) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, our sister circuits have been more definitive in considering the federal kidnapping statute. United States v. Patino, 962 F.2d 263, 264, 267 (2d Cir.1992) (“That the crime of kidnapping involves the threatened use of physical force against a person and is thus a crime of violence under this statute cannot be questioned.“); United States v. Salemi, 26 F.3d 1084, 1087 (11th Cir.1994) (babysitting house guest steals infant without force, but court stated that “[k]idnapping is a violent crime” because “[t]he Commission recognized that kidnapping inherently involves the threat of violence“). Similarly, interpreting a state statute that resembles the federal statute, the Sixth Circuit held that kidnapping under
the essence of kidnapping is requiring another to do something against his or her will; and because physical force or
restraint is usually the best way to overbear the will of another, physical force or threat of force is a latent, but more often actual, companion of the coercive element. That deception may be used to effect the kidnapping does not erase the ever-present possibility that the victim may figure out what‘s really going on and decide to resist, in turn requiring the perpetrator to resort to actual physical restraint if he is to carry out the criminal plan.
Id. at 324. The same reasoning applies here to kidnapping by force or fear under
Finally, legislative bodies, including Congress, have consistently treated kidnapping as a crime of violence. Although these bodies did not necessarily have in mind a definition of a “crime of violence” as involving a “substantial risk of force,” we find it instructive that historically, “kidnapping” has always been an enumerated violent crime. This history is part of the common-sense understanding of kidnapping. In 1926, as part of an effort to regulate firearms after World War I, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws promulgated the Uniform Firearms Act (“UFA“), which, among other things, outlawed gun ownership for persons convicted of a “crime of violence.” See C. Kevin Marshall, Why Can‘t Martha Stewart Have a Gun?, 32 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol‘y 695, 700-01 (2009). In 1930, the drafters promulgated another version of the act which defined “crime of violence” as an enumerated list of (largely) common law crimes: “murder, manslaughter, rape, mayhem, assault to do great bodily harm, robbery, burglary [house-breaking, breaking and entering, kidnapping, and larceny].”5 That is, the UFA defined the term “crime of violence” “to cover such crimes as are ordinarily committed with the aid of firearms.” Note, The Uniform Firearms Act, 18 Va. L. Rev. 904, 906 n.11 (1932). By 1938, the Conference reported that 10 states had already adopted the UFA. Note, Firearms: Problems of Control, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1328, 1337 n.60 (1967); see, e.g., Act of June 11, 1931, § 1, 1931 Pa. Laws 497, 497 (“‘Crime of violence,’ as used in this act, means any of the following crimes, or an attempt to commit any of the same, namely: murder, rape, mayhem, aggravated assault and battery, assault with intent to kill, robbery, burglary, breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, and kidnapping“).
That same year, Congress adopted the Federal Firearms Act, the first federal effort to prevent felons from possessing firearms. Following the conventions recommended by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, the prohibition applied only to felons convicted of a “crime of violence,” Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, § 2(f), 52 Stat. 1250, 1251 (1938), which the Act defined as “murder, manslaughter, rape, mayhem, kidnaping, burglary, housebreaking; assault with intent to kill, commit rape, or rob; assault with a dangerous weapon, or assault with intent to commit any offense punishable by imprisonment for more than one year,” id. § 1(6), 52 Stat. at 1250. Congress subsequently amended federal law to prohibit the possession of a firearm by any felon regardless of the offense of conviction. See Act of October 3, 1961, Pub. L. No. 87-342, 75 Stat. 757; see also
The definition also persists through a wide variety of contexts in statutes across a large array of jurisdictions. Twenty states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands all define, at some point in their respective codes, “crime of violence” to include kidnapping. See
In sum, numerous courts have held that kidnapping generally presents a risk of substantial force. Congress, the Sentencing Commission, and forty jurisdictions have concluded, consistent with historical practice, that kidnapping is a violent crime. Based on all the available evidence, the government sufficiently met its burden of showing that an ordinary kidnapping under
PETITION DENIED.
