The Denver-based federal appeals court concluded on Tuesday that a judge incorrectly believed he had to sentence a defendant convicted of kidnapping to the 25-year mandatory minimum that applies to violent crime.

A jury originally convicted Killiu Ford on multiple counts of kidnapping and related offenses for his 2009 abduction and robbery of a family. He received 50 years in prison as a result.

A decade later, he successfully obtained a resentencing after the government conceded Ford’s firearm conviction could not stand.

During a November 2023 hearing before U.S. District Court Senior Judge Robert E. Blackburn, he acknowledged he could “simply subtract” the seven-year firearms sentence and leave Ford with 43 remaining years in prison.

However, Blackburn said Ford underwent “significant post-offense rehabilitation” and was “a much different man.”

“In many ways, I wish the world was a different place, and that I could impose a lesser sentence for you,” said Blackburn, but he concluded he had to resentence Ford to the 25-year mandatory minimum applicable to crimes of violence.

On appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Ford argued he should have been eligible for a lesser, 20-year sentence because kidnapping does not fit the test for violent crime.

A two-judge appellate panel agreed.

Senior Judge David M. Ebel, in the Oct. 28 opinion, explained that courts must apply a “categorical approach” when determining if an offense is a violent crime. That method does not look at the facts of a given case, but whether the elements of a crime always include the use or attempted use of force.

For kidnapping, the answer was no “because kidnapping can be committed without the use of physical force,” wrote Ebel.

He elaborated that kidnapping occurs when a defendant “seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward” another person. Although Congress imposed a 25-year mandatory minimum “if the crime of violence is kidnapping” a child, kidnapping is not categorically violent.

Courts “have consistently found that a person can commit kidnapping without the use, attempted use, or threatened use of force,” wrote Ebel. “For example, a person can commit kidnapping by inveigling — that is, luring, or enticing, or leading the person astray by false representations or promises, or other deceitful means.”

Consequently, the panel returned Ford’s case to Blackburn for a second resentencing.

Unusually, the opinion came from a two-judge panel of Ebel and Chief Judge Jerome A. Holmes because the third member, Stephanie K. Seymour, has ceased hearing cases. Seymour became the court’s longest-serving judge this year, and she participated in oral arguments in November 2024 for Ford’s case. However, the 10th Circuit’s clerk said Seymour, who was a semi-retired senior judge with a reduced caseload, since stepped away from the court.

The 10th Circuit permits panels to issue decisions with just two judges when they agree on an outcome. The court’s clerk added that all cases featuring Seymour as a panel member have been decided, and no further two-judge decisions will be issued for that reason.

The case is United States v. Ford.