US-CA9 · jury_instructions
9th Cir. Model Jury Instr. (Criminal) 17.7
Hostage Taking (18 U.S.C. § 1203(a))
The defendant is charged in [Count _______ of] the indictment with taking a person hostage in violation of Section 1203(a) of Title 18 of the United States Code. For the defendant to be found guilty of that charge, the government must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
First, the defendant intentionally seized or detained a person;
Second, the defendant threatened to kill, injure, or continue to detain that person; and
Third, the defendant did so with the purpose and intention of compelling [a third person] [a government organization] to act, or refrain from acting, in some way, as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the seized or detained person.
A person is “seized” or “detained” when the person is held or confined against his or her will by physical restraint, fear, or deception for an appreciable period of time.
[The fact that the person may initially agree to accompany the hostage taker does not prevent a later “seizure” or “detention.”]
Provenance
- Source
- ce9.uscourts.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-20
- Edition
- 2026-08-20
- Content hash
62a6921da1b6eb070f40cd2aaaf6363080dc5476f84bb010cecfb417a16f5cf7
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.