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People v. Mayfield1/2/1997
en taking place for fear the kidnapper would kill or further injure the hostage.
"The crime is complete once the kidnapping for extortion occurs whether or not the official act desired is obtained." (Italics added.)
Defendant challenges the italicized portion of the instruction, which is a close paraphrase of language appearing in Magee v. Superior Court (1973) 34 Cal. App. 3d 201, 219 [109 Cal. Rptr. 758], a decision that this court disapproved in People v. Norris (1985) 40 Cal. 3d 51, 56 [219 Cal. Rptr. 7, 706 P.2d 1141], " o the extent implies that any conduct aimed at interfering with law enforcement duties is punishable [as kidnapping for extortion] under section 209 . . . ." To understand whether, as defendant argues, this remark implies disapproval of the instruction given here, it is necessary to examine Norris in some detail.
In Norris, two deputies had been transporting a prisoner from Folsom state prison to a branch county jail in Vallejo when the prisoner produced a gun and demanded that the deputies drive him to San Francisco. This court concluded that "although defendant committed a variety of other crimes, his demands neither constituted extortion nor reflected any intent to extort within the meaning of section 209." ( People v. Norris, (supra) , 40 Cal. 3d 51, 53.)
We began our analysis in Norris with the statutory definitions of extortion and kidnapping for extortion. ( People v. Norris, (supra) , 40 Cal. 3d 51, 54.) As we observed, section 518 defines extortion as "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right." (Italics added.) The Legislature had added the italicized language to section 518 in 1939, apparently in response to People v. Robinson (1933) 130 Cal. App. 664 [20 P.2d 369], in which the Court of Appeal had held that blackmailing a Judge to obtain an appointment as a receiver did not constitute attempted extortion because public offices such as receiverships are not "property" within the meaning of section 518. Section 209, as applicable both in Norris and in this case, defined kidnapping for extortion in these terms: "Any person who seizes, confines, inveigles, entices, decoys, abducts, conceals, kidnaps or carries away any individual by any means whatsoever with intent to hold or detain, or who holds or detains, such individual . . . to commit extortion . . . is guilty of a felony . . . ."
We framed the issue in Norris as "whether the deputies' compliance with defendant's demands would have constituted an 'official act.' " ( People v. Norris, (supra) , 40 Cal. 3d 51, 54.) In the absence of a statutory definition or a "plain unambiguous meaning" of "official act," we applied "traditional rules of construction to discern the probable intent of the Legislature in enacting these provisions." (Ibid.) Presuming that the Legislature was aware of prior decisional law when it added the "official act" language to section 518 in 1939, we noted that this court had defined "official act" in Abbott v. Cooper (1933) 218 Cal. 425, 433 [23 P.2d 1027]. At issue in Abbott was the act of a deputy sheriff assigned to a county jail in making an arrest without sufficient cause. Concluding that the arrest was an "official act," this court in Abbott had reasoned: ". . . [The deputy sheriff] was an officer in charge of a county jail, and had authority to detain persons charged with crime on a suitable writ or process. . . . He exercised every function a jailer or officer could have exercised in the discharge of official duty. . . . 'n official act does not mean what the deputy might lawfully do in the execu
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