The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that motor vehicles are not per se instrumentalities of interstate commerce for purposes of the Commerce Clause, so the intrastate use of a motor vehicle during the commission of an alleged kidnapping alone is not sufficient to support a federal kidnapping indictment.

Background

At approximately 2:20 a.m., Jerrold Albert Chavarria and Jerry Antocio Romero were seen on surveillance video exiting a red Jeep Cherokee Latitude at a Budget Inn Motel. They were accompanied by a young woman; the trio rented a room. About two hours later, video surveillance captured them exiting the room, and the young woman was sobbing. They got into the Jeep and exited the parking lot. Roughly three hours later, the Jeep returned to the parking lot, but the only occupants were Chavarria and Romero. 

Several hours later, 911 received a call about a lifeless body of a young woman. She was identified as the young woman seen in the surveillance video at the motel. An autopsy indicated that she had been shot 21 times and suffered other severe physical traumas. Investigators recovered a cigarette butt at the scene containing Chavarria’s DNA. They also identified tire tracks at the scene that matched the Jeep and shoe imprints consistent with those worn by Romero.

On February 22, 2023, Chavarria and Romero were indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of federal kidnapping resulting in death under 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1). Romero moved to dismiss the superseding federal indictment, and Chavarria adopted the motion. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico granted the motion on the ground that the federal indictment did not sufficiently allege use of an instrumentality of interstate commerce. The Government timely appealed.

Analysis

The Court began its analysis by discussing the federal kidnapping statute—18 U.S.C. § 1201(a). Kidnapping is a federal crime when the offender uses an “instrumentality of interstate commerce in committing or in furtherance of the offense.” Id. The relevant portion of the statute reads as follows: “Whoever unlawfully … kidnaps … any person … when … the offender … uses … any means, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in committing or in furtherance of the commission of the offense … shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years and, if the death of any person results, shall be punished by death or life imprisonment.”

The Government sought to satisfy the “instrumentality” requirement of the statute by alleging the use of the Jeep constituted “furtherance of the commission of the offense,” the Court noted. The Government essentially argued that all motor vehicles are instrumentalities of interstate commerce. Chavarria and Romero conceded that some, but not all, are, so the superseding federal indictment was insufficient as applied. 

The Court observed that the federal government lacks “a police power or a general authority to combat violent crime” under the Constitution. United States v. Patton, 451 F.3d 615 (10th Cir. 2006). Instead, the federal government’s authority to punish crime lies exclusively with its enumerated powers. See Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821) (“Congress has a right to punish murder in a fort, or other place within its exclusive jurisdiction; but no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States.”). 

The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power of the federal government. It provides that “Congress shall have Power … [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Although the federal government’s power to regulate commerce among the states is broad, it is not unlimited. United States v. Durham, 902 F.3d 1180 (10th Cir. 2018). Congressional power “may not be extended so as to … obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). 

The Supreme Court has defined the scope of the Commerce Clause by identifying “three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under its commerce power.” Lopez. They are as follows: (1) the use of channels of interstate commerce (“Category 1”), (2) the regulation and protection of the instrumentalities of interstate commerce or persons or things in interstate commerce (“Category 2”), and (3) the power to regulate activities that have substantial relation to interstate commerce (“Category 3”). Id. 

The Court noted that neither the Tenth Circuit nor the Supreme Court has expressly defined or limited the term “instrumentality of interstate commerce.” It stated that the Tenth Circuit has defined instrumentalities as the “means of interstate commerce such as ships and railroads, and the ‘persons or things in interstate commerce’ are the persons or things transported by the instrumentalities among the states.” United States v. Patton, 451 F.3d 615 (10th Cir. 2006). However, this definition fails to “define the outer parameters of the term,” the Court stated. 

But the Court was not tasked with providing a general definition of instrumentality that encompasses “the outer parameters of the term.” Instead, it explained: “The question we must answer is whether ‘motor vehicles’ are always presumed to be instrumentalities of interstate commerce. We hold they are not.”

After an extensive discussion of several cases that dealt with defining instrumentality, the Court stated:

Not every motor vehicle is essential to, or predominantly used for, commerce. In fact, many bear no cognizable relationship to commerce. What about e-bikes? Lawnmowers? Electric scooters? Elevators? Motorized Wheelchairs? With enough imagination, one might fathom a way these ‘motor vehicles’ could be used for interstate commerce—but we do not think we can infer, as a class, that they are interstate instrumentalities.

The Court stated that it will not “infer that every ‘motor vehicle’ is an instrumentality just because many are.” The Court explained that it follows the instruction set forth in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), that individual objects are “instruments” of commerce “only in so far” as they have a connection “with the commerce which Congress has power to regulate.” Importantly, many motor vehicles are used exclusively for non-commercial and intrastate purposes, the Court stated. Motor vehicles used for such purposes do not fall “within the purview of the federal constitution.” Id. 

Conclusion

The Court instructed: “To be an ‘instrumentality of interstate commerce,’ subject to Congress’s Category 2 authority, an object must be more than just a means to an end. It must be a means to the end of commerce. What the government must allege to satisfy this requirement will vary based on the object used. Under binding case law, it need not do much. But it must do more than it did here.” Thus, the Court held that motor vehicles “are not per se instrumentalities of interstate commerce for purposes of the federal kidnapping statute.” 

Accordingly, the Court affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of the superseding indictment. See: United States v. Chavarria, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 14851 (10th Cir. 2025).  

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