Every person who shall maliciously, willfully, or fraudulently lead, take, carry away, decoy or entice away, any child under the age of fourteen (14) years, with intent to detain or conceal such child from its parents, guardian, or other person having lawful charge of such child, or for the purpose of prostitution, concubinage, or marriage, shall, on conviction, be imprisoned in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than two (2) years nor more than ten (10) years, or fined not more than Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00), or both. Investigation and prosecution of a defendant under this section does not preclude prosecution of the defendant for a violation of other applicable criminal laws, including, but not limited to, the Mississippi Human Trafficking Act, Section 97-3-54 et seq.
Miss. Code Ann. § 97-5-5
Enticing child for concealment, prostitution or marriage
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Mitchell v. Random House, Inc. (1989)
Most recently applied in 799 So. 2d 70 - Ishee v. State (October 2001)
Codes, Hutchinson’s 1848, ch. 64, art. 12, Title 3 (31); 1857, ch. 64, art. 58; 1871, § 2529; 1880, § 2753; 1892, § 1002; 1906, § 1079; Hemingway’s 1917, § 806; 1930, § 825; 194…
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Mississippi Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Mississippi statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.