United States v. Winder
Opinion
Defendant Ronald Detro Winder is serving a three-year prison sentence for possession of firearms by a convicted felon.
See
The Sentencing Guidelines define
crime of violence
to include "any offense under federal or state law, punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, that ... has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of
physical force
against the person of another." USSG § 4B1.2(a)(1) (emphasis added). This provision is commonly referred to as the "elements clause."
See, e.g.
,
United States v. Ash
,
To determine whether a defendant's prior conviction was for a crime of violence (or violent felony) under the elements clause, we apply the categorical approach.
See
Ash
,
*1254
In this case, therefore, the task before us is to assess whether
The Supreme Court has held that the term
physical force
in the elements clause "refers to force exerted by and through concrete bodies," as opposed to, "for example, intellectual or emotional force."
Johnson v. United States
,
In determining whether a state statute satisfies the violent-force requirement, we look to "the words of the statute and judicial interpretations of it."
McConnell
,
In our view, § 6-5-204(b) is a violent felony within the meaning of the guidelines. The statute states:
A person who intentionally and knowingly causes or attempts to cause bodily injury to a peace officer engaged in the lawful performance of his official duties is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten (10) years.
Defendant's sole argument on appeal is that the phrase "any impairment of physical condition" makes Wyoming's definition of
bodily injury
broad enough to reach conduct that does not involve force "capable of causing physical pain or injury."
Stokeling
,
The Supreme Court has not specified what it means by the word
injury
in its description of
violent force
as "force capable of causing physical pain or
injury
,"
Black's Law Dictionary defines impairment as "[t]he quality, state, or condition of being damaged, weakened, or diminished < impairment of collateral>; specif., a condition in which a part of a person's mind or body is damaged or does not work well, esp. when the condition amounts to a disability." Black's Law Dictionary 869 (10th ed. 2014). 3 That definition is quite similar to the same dictionary's definition of physical injury , which it equates to bodily injury , which it defines as "physical damage to a person's body." Id . at 906. Webster's Third New International Dictionary even defines impairment with a synonymous cross-reference to the word "injury." Webster's Third New Int'l Dictionary 1131 (2002) ("the act of impairing or the state of being impaired: INJURY ...."). And the New Oxford American Dictionary uses the word impair in its definition of injure : "do physical harm or damage to (someone); ... harm or impair (something)." New Oxford American Dictionary at 868 (2d ed. 2005). We conclude that, at the least, there is no reason to believe that the statutory term impair was meant to convey anything more than injure .
Perhaps most compelling is the view of the Model Penal Code (MPC), which is the source of the Wyoming statute's identical definition of bodily injury . See MPC § 210.0(2) (" 'bodily injury' means physical pain, illness or any impairment of physical condition"); see generally T. E. Lauer, Goodbye 3-Card Monte: the Wyoming Criminal Code of 1982 , 19 Land and Water L. Rev. 107, 115 (1984) (noting that many definitions in the Wyoming Criminal Code of 1982, including the definition of bodily injury , were taken from the MPC). The MPC provides that a person is guilty of simple assault if he:
(a) attempts to cause or purposely, knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to another; or
(b) negligently causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon; or *1256 (c) attempts by physical menace to put another in fear of imminent serious bodily injury .
§ 211.1(1) (emphasis added). Thus, the concept of "bodily injury" is central to the definition of the offense. Yet comment 2 to § 211.1 states: "The Model Code further departs from prior law in limiting assault to cases involving either the fact or prospect of
physical injury
. Mere offensive contact is excluded, though this is not to say that such conduct need go unpunished." MPC at 185 (emphasis added). The drafters obviously thought that their definition of
bodily injury
(identical to that of Wyoming) necessarily entailed "physical injury." And we assume that the Wyoming Supreme Court would find this commentary quite persuasive.
See
O'Brien v. State
,
Perhaps some court would construe "impairment of physical condition" to encompass Defendant's hypotheticals about shining a light in an officer's eyes, setting off a stink bomb, or giving an officer a sleeping pill. For that matter, however, a court might include those hypotheticals as examples of "physical injury" (the term used in
Johnson
,
To be sure, if a state statute "specifically says" that it covers conduct that is nonviolent, we do not need to identify a case affirming a conviction for nonviolent conduct.
United States v. Titties
,
We are buttressed in this conclusion by the decisions of two other circuits that have reached the same conclusion when applying the categorical approach to state crimes that included the element of "bodily harm," defined as "physical pain or injury, illness, or any impairment of physical condition."
See
Jones v. United States
,
We AFFIRM Defendant's sentence.
Initially, Defendant also argued on appeal that a person could violate the Wyoming statute simply by causing
de minimis
pain, which did not entail "violent force." After
Stokeling
clarified that "violent force" does not require a particular degree or likelihood of pain or injury,
Defendant also asserts in a footnote that the word
illness
in the definition of
bodily injury
would permit a person to be prosecuted for nonviolent conduct, "given that there is no evident requirement that such ... illness be painful." Aplt. Suppl. Br. at 8 n.6. But force does not need to cause pain or injury to constitute "physical force"; it need only be
capable
of causing pain or injury.
See
Stokeling
,
The definition's reference to a mental impairment is not relevant here, because the Wyoming statute applied only to "impairment of physical condition." Wyo. Stat. § 6-1-104(a)(i) (2012) (emphasis added).
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Ronald Detro WINDER, Defendant - Appellant.
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Published