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A gang invited me to a house, when I arrived they dragged me around the property and beat me up. There are no witnesses on my side but I think it is pretty obvious what happened and I hope the police just make the gang confess by giving rewards for information.

How far does someone have to be moved for it to be considered a kidnapping? Do you need to be driven in a car a long distance or is dragging someone into a house enough? Does it depend?

There was also robbery and aggravated assault involved so if kidnapping can be proven they all get life without parole.

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    Kidnapping is prosecuted by the state (Not a Federal crime if you don't cross state lines), so you don't need to establish personally whether this classifies as kidnapping. You file a police report, and let authorities figure it out.
    – MSalters
    Commented May 16, 2020 at 18:56
  • They haven't determined I'm just curious
    – user31975
    Commented May 16, 2020 at 19:03
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    I'm curious as to why you would go to a house of a gang by invitation?
    – Ron Beyer
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 16:20
  • So they'd get arrested
    – user31975
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 20:05

1 Answer 1

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Here is Nevada's definition of kidnapping:

1.  A person who willfully seizes, confines, inveigles, entices, decoys, abducts, conceals, kidnaps or carries away a person by any means whatsoever with the intent to hold or detain, or who holds or detains, the person for ransom, or reward, or for the purpose of committing sexual assault, extortion or robbery upon or from the person, or for the purpose of killing the person or inflicting substantial bodily harm upon the person, or to exact from relatives, friends, or any other person any money or valuable thing for the return or disposition of the kidnapped person, and a person who leads, takes, entices, or carries away or detains any minor with the intent to keep, imprison, or confine the minor from his or her parents, guardians, or any other person having lawful custody of the minor, or with the intent to hold the minor to unlawful service, or perpetrate upon the person of the minor any unlawful act is guilty of kidnapping in the first degree which is a category A felony.

2.  A person who willfully and without authority of law seizes, inveigles, takes, carries away or kidnaps another person with the intent to keep the person secretly imprisoned within the State, or for the purpose of conveying the person out of the State without authority of law, or in any manner held to service or detained against the person’s will, is guilty of kidnapping in the second degree which is a category B felony.

As you can see, you don't have to take the victim anywhere. Seizing and confining against a person's will suffice. Substantial bodily harm is defined as "Bodily injury which creates a substantial risk of death or which causes serious, permanent disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ; or Prolonged physical pain".

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  • So its definitely kidnapping
    – user31975
    Commented May 16, 2020 at 21:39
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    @Dan Nothing is definite. Criminal cases are decided by juries. Notwithstanding a strict reading of the statute and jury instructions, if an offense doesn't feel to the jury like kidnapping, a jury will often decline to convict on that charge even if it technically seems to meet the elements of the crime, in a mild form of jury nullification that is partially just applying the law with a bit of common sense.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Jun 24, 2020 at 1:08
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    Also, if a fact pattern doesn't fit a common sense definition of a crime, often an appellate court or trial judge would interpret the law to mean something other than what its literal language applied blindly would imply. In this case, an interpretation under which almost every case of battery or robbery would also constitute kidnapping would usually be rejected, it would need some facts that distinguish crimes also involving robbery and assault with kidnapping, as opposed to robbery and assault without it, to hold up, rather than a hyper-technical reading.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Jun 24, 2020 at 1:12
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    Bottom line: Logical deductive reasoning only goes so far in legal matters. It is a starting point, but not a reliable way of being sure of the answer. The most reliable way to interpret the law is too look at how factually similar cases were resolved by appellate courts in published decisions. If there is no factually similar case law, particularly in a broad and crudely drafted statute like this one that uses archaic language, the outcome is always somewhat uncertain.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Jun 24, 2020 at 1:32

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