A person who unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away any other person by any means whatsoever without authority of law, except when a minor is seized or taken by his parent, is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be imprisoned for a period not to exceed thirty years.
S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-910
Kidnapping
Applied in 51 court decisions — leading case State v. Alexander (1991)
Most recently applied in State v. Shands (June 2018)
1962 Code SECTION 16-91; 1952 Code SECTION 16-91; 1942 Code SECTION 1122; 1937 (40) 137; 1966 (54) 2151; 1974 (58) 2361; 1976 Act No. 684; 1991 Act No. 117, SECTION 1; 2024 Act …
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.
Official source: South Carolina Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.