Archive | assault

United States v. Davis, No. 10-4104-cr (2d Cir. August 24, 2012) (Walker, Lynch, Droney, CJJ) 

Hoping to evade a drug arrest, Deitron Davis ran from an agent; during the chase the agent frequently caught up to him and struck him with a baton, but Davis – a very big guy – kept running. Eventually, other agents joined in. They caught Davis and pinned him to the ground, stomach down. He struggled and resisted being handcuffed, to no avail, but did not threaten or strike any of the agents. A jury convicted him both of the drug offense and of misdemeanor resisting arrest, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a). On appeal, however, the circuit agreed that the evidence was legally insufficient to make out this offense.  

The wording of § 111(a) is notoriously vexing: where the defendant “forcibly assaults resists, opposes, impedes, intimates, or interferes with” a …

United States v. Delis, No. 08-0641-cr (2d Cir. March 5, 2009) (McLaughlin, Calabresi, Livingston, CJJ)

On a flight from Zurich to JFK, Pierre Delis, upset that the meal service ran out of chicken, got into a scuffle with a flight attendant during which, at a minimum, he pushed her hand away from his face. He was charged with simple assault, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(5), and his defense was a lack of intent to injure. After a bench trial, a Magistrate Judge convicted him, holding that intent to injure was not an element of the offense, and finding that Delis had the intent to “engage in an offensive touching.” He appealed first to the district court, which affirmed, and then to the circuit, which affirmed as well.

Section 113(5) criminalizes “simple assault,” a term with common-law origins. At common law, a battery was the “unlawful application of force …