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Court: Minutes-long assault didn't justify kidnapping charge

Gavel court AP photo
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PHOENIX — A federal court on Thursday overturned a man’s kidnapping conviction stemming from his assaulting his girlfriend for seven minutes, ruling that the time he restrained the victim while beating her was too brief to be charged separately.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that Giordano Jackson of Teesto, Arizona, be resentenced on his assault conviction stemming from the July 2017 incident.

In a separate but related decision, the court upheld Jackson’s convictions for first-degree murder and other crimes in his fatal beating of the same woman, Alvina Nez, in September 2017.

Jackson was sentenced to life in prison for killing Nez.