Case Update (13 Feb 2025): US v. Zielinski; IPKCA does not provide defense of fleeing violence against a third party
The Defendant was found guilty of absconding with her minor child to Mexico “with the intent of depriving her ex-husband of his parental rights.” She was sentenced to 36 months imprisonment. Defendant appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the District Court erroneously prohibited her from introducing evidence that she absconded with her child to protect him from sexual abuse by the father. The salient part of the statute that provides an affirmative defense to international parental kidnapping is if “the defendant was fleeing an incidence or pattern of domestic violence.”
The District Court, and the majority in the 8th Circuit, concluded that this language only applies to the Defendant. In other words, the Defendant alone suffered the domestic violence that prompted the flight to safety. The 8th Circuit concluded that to read it to include violence against a third party “stretches the plain text of the statute.” It concluded that if Congress had wanted to include defense of a third party, it could have done so, and reading it to include a third-party “would lead to unintended consequences - allowing defendants to ‘convert[] every child-kidnapping prosecution into a replay of the child-custody proceedings, in which the defendant would try to relitigate the domestic-relations case by showing that he or she really should have received custody.”
The 8th Circuit affirmed the Defendant’s conviction.
The dissent disagreed with the plain reading of the salient part of the statute. In citing to the dictionary, the dissent stated that the words “the defendant was fleeing” means “‘to run away often from danger or evil,’ or to ‘hurry toward a place of security.’” The dissent stated that the defense “recognizes that a parent has an inherently intimate connection with her child.” “Whether the defendant is trying to escape domestic violence targeted toward herself or her child, the defendant is still ‘fleeing’ from domestic violence.” The dissent found that the statute does not specifically reference domestic violence against a third party because it “speaks only of the defendant’s flight from domestic violence".” The statute “requires the defendant, not anyone else, to flee.” And, “[i]f a defendant flees with a child due to domestic violence against the child, she is still fleeing an incidence or pattern of domestic violence.”
