hostage-taking

[Baker, John]

        These are separate, though similar, legal offenses.  A hostage-taker is one who "seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure, or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third person or a governmental organization to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the person detained, or attempts or conspires to do so."  18 U.S.C. sec. 1203.  The federal kidnapping statute applies to one who "unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person."  18 U.S.C. sec. 1201.  In each case, the penalty is imprisonment for any term of years or for life and, if the death of any person results, punishment by death or life imprisonment.

John Baker

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barnhart [SMTP:ADS-L at HIGHLANDS.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 4:32 PM
> To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:           hostage-taking
>
> I heard a press conference on CNN today in which Ashkroft several times
> used the term hostage-taking rather than kidnapping.  What is there
> legal distinction?  Or, is this an Ashkroftism?
>