California Penal Code

§ 209

PEN § 209 Effective Jan 1, 2022Title 8 · Part 1 · Ch. 3

Statute text

(a)A person who seizes, confines, inveigles, entices, decoys, abducts, conceals, kidnaps, or carries away another person by any means whatsoever with intent to hold or detain, or who holds or detains, that person for ransom, reward, or to commit extortion or to exact from another person any money or valuable thing, or a person who aids or abets any such act, is guilty of a felony. When a person subjected to that act suffers death or bodily harm, or is intentionally confined in a manner that exposes that person to a substantial likelihood of death, the person, upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life without possibility of parole. When no person subjected to that act suffers death or bodily harm, the person, upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole.

(b)(1) A person who kidnaps or carries away an individual to commit robbery, rape, oral copulation, sodomy, or any violation of Section 264.1, 288, 289, or former Section 262, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole.

(2)This subdivision shall only apply if the movement of the victim is beyond that merely incidental to the commission of, and increases the risk of harm to the victim over and above that necessarily present in, the intended underlying offense.

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Legislative history

Amended by Stats. 2021, Ch. 626, Sec. 16. (AB 1171) Effective January 1, 2022.