cause most natural reading about causes that it reaches only uses of force that are intentionally or knowingly aimed at another person the force cause therefore does not reach a person who uses force recklessly because such a person is indifferent as to whether the force used falls on another person or on no one at all such an interpretation not only is compelled by the text of the force cause but is supported by its broader context namely to define the phrase violent felony and to identif those repeat offenders who are likely to point a gun at someone in the future and thus warrant a minimum of fifteen years in prison until recently our interpretation was the uniform interpretation of the courts of appeals which relied on the text of the court below reversed course and adopted a contrary interpretation those courts were mistaken in fuzzy in this court was interpreting different statutory language in a wholly different context and it expressed we reserve the question presented here the government advocates an interpretation of the force cause the disgracefully over inclusive sweeping in offenses such as reckless driving and thereby dramatically expanding the scope of the act the text of the force cause does not support that interpretation and it certainly does not unambiguously dictate it at a minimum given that every court of appeals had until recently rejected the government's interpretation this court should apply the rule of lenity and hold that the force cause excludes reckless offens quote that it's not natural to say that a person actively employs physical force against another person by accident i'm not sure i understand that if i'm you know at a sports event and jump up in wave my arms cheering and hit the person next to me haven't i employed physical force against that person by accident perhaps mr chief justice because in the hypothetical the use of force is volitional we're really relying on a separate aspect of we have cows reasoning that is that the against phrase is the critical and key phrase that limits the use of physical force and that defines the necessary degree of and at and that's really how to reconcile we a cow probably well what about something that's in recklessness you know if i'm as part of a prank i'm sweet swinging a bat i had at someone of course meaning not to hit them but you know the bat slips and it does them certainly say that the conduct was reckless and you could say that it's directed against another person so why isn't recklessness enough under that standard i would certainly say in that hypothetical mr chief justice that you have use physical force but i would not say that you have used physical force against the person of another and the government's alternative interpretation i would respectfully submit really read the phrase out of context we're not disputing i don't understand that if i'm swinging the bat and i'm i'm certainly and it ends up hitting him i'm using physical force i'm going to swing and it's against him i'm looking at him swinging the bat a well if you're looking at him and swinging a bat at him that is much closer to intent but i think what i would say if you do it recklessly no no i don't mean to him i have no intent to hit him it's a joke and but but unfortunately the bat slips well i would say that in that circumstance you've used physical force and the force has fallen on the other person and again if you accept the government's reasoning i think it really would include not just reckless offenses but also negligent offenses and of course that was the whole point of the relevant reasoning in leah cal the court made quite clear that it was excluding not just accidental offenses but also negligent offenses and then it was relying on the against phrase if you don't account so justice thomas  thank you mrs chief justice counsel i'd like you to go back to your reliance on me against phrase in your efforts to distance this case from  cohabited with the victim as a spouse so it seems that even though it doesn't use the term against does strongly suggest th absence of that word makes absolutely no difference to the analysis so i don't think that that's true justice thomas for two reasons st in the opinion in was in itself the and seventy nine the supreme court reporter quoted the exact language i was relying on with the chief justice that is to say it quoted the language from lee a cow relying on the phrase against the person or property of another so i think the court was very sensitive to that but nd to go to the reference in section nine hundred and twenty two gene nine to a victor i don't think that the government can get very much purchase out of that and indeed the government really doesn't try to rely on that but i do think that some lower courts have been somewhat misled by that and let me explain if i can why i think that reference isn't hannum out to the inclusion of a phrase like against the person of another section nine twenty two gene nine does not require the use of force against the victim instead it only refers to the victim in the finding the offender and it was really for that reason that this court in a case called united states versus hayes in an opinion written by justice ginsburg concluded that the relationship with the victim is not even an element under section one hundred and twenty two g nine and so again some lower courts have i think looks to that reference but i think that those lower courts have not focused on the fact that this court in hayes really rejected the notion that this was equivalent to a phrase requiring the use of force against a victim one final question is this if johnson if we  fallen under our statute that would have fallen under the residual clause rather than those as well perhaps but with one cavanaugh justice thomas and i'll be brief in the gay and then insights this court had a very vigorous back and forth on whether the residual cause extended to reckless offenses and i think by the end of sykes the court had effectively restricted the residual clause to intentional offenses and of course it would be highly anomalous to take a broader view of the example i have my bank ball bat i'm swinging around i know i am the worst baseball player in history i know that this baseball bat is a likely to blow it out of my hands and somebody on the head there is the person standing in front of me i think oh god that person maybe i don't want him to do that he might because i'm so bad and then i swing it an all right what's the difference really between that and my committing a crime no you know that result is likely to follow or desiring it intentionally purposely and it's likely to fall so just as prior i would make two points in response to that the st is that this is a familiar and meaningful distinction in the law it's a distinction that the model penal code itself described as important and that is simply the distinction between an action that is intended to cause harm and an action that is not intended to cause harm but merely involves a substantial risk of it and that is the distinction that we think that the language of force cla captures but i would make one additional point that i have not made to date and that is that even if you think that the against phrase doesn't do all of the work i would submit that this court's decisions and particularly its decision in big day do the remainder of the work because they make clear that the relevant language must be understood in its statutory context which is to provide a definition of the phrase violent felony and where someone acts recklessly even though the law obviously attributes to that person a substantial degree of moral culpability that action simply doesn't fall within the ordinary meaning of violent felony and the nd point i would make just as prior is that  whatever you might think about sort of the fine gradations in particular hypotheticals i would respectfully submit that it would be a lot harder to draw the line between recklessness and criminal negligence because negligence itself in the model penal code is defined as being a situation in which an actor should be aware of once again a substantial and unjustifiable risk as the government recognizes and footnote five of its brief states often that has three prior convictions or a nd degree murder in a jurisdiction why federal court i believe where the minimum men's rights were choir for that is a form of recklessness you would say that that person does not qualify under the arm career criminal act in fact correct not necessarily justice alito and that is because when you're talking about nd degree murder whether under federal law under state law typically the state of mind that's required is the state of mind that we learned about in law school a so called to pray hard or extreme reckless i think probably the better for you is that extreme recklessness still doesn't off i under textual interpretation but i would acknowledge that there are good reasons potentially to treat extreme recklessness differently from ordinary recklessness the model penal code itself appears to equate that state of mind with intent or knowledge it equa ordinary recklessness is not yeah i'm happy to acknowledge that justice alito and again it's because as you say we're talking about extreme indifference to human life such as shooting into a crowd and i think courts have pretty consistently treated that is tantamount to acting intentionally or knowingly all right now pose a person shooting into a crowd suppose a person who looks with a crowd of people or just looks at a single person and this person has got a lot  of has got a hairdo that sticks up quite a bit on top of the hairdo there is a hat and the person says oh i don't know i don't know how great a shot i am but i'm going to try to pick off that hat without touching a hair on the person's face a person's ha that would be a stretch to say that that is the use of force against the person of the day of the target i think would be a stretch to say that you know as you say if i had on the person it sort of feels as if i had it is part of the person but you know again i'm going to recognize that there may be close cases there are close cases when prosecutors make charging decisions to all of the states of mind i think our principal submission justice alito is simply the point that you made on the rd circuit in the bodgy case and that is that a reckless offense an offense involving ordinary recklessness although involving a substantial degree of moral culpability does not fall within the ordinary meaning of filing crime much less the ordinary meaning of violence on a well you know i was i was on the court of appeals with the of the phrase use of force against the person of another but i would respectfully submit that that's just not how a person would ordinarily speak and if congress was trying to convey that meaning it would have said something like the use of physical force there recklessly causes injury to another example the individual who was charged with reckless lee causing injury who was blinded by the sun and there are other examples of that is that the whole point of this exercise that be cause recklessness is is not necessarily and acts directed against another person that's why it cannot qualify as a as a crime of violence yes that's correct justice sotomayor and i think it's important for the court to keep in mind here that we're not talking about individual cases we're talking about state statute and state statutes ordinarily draw a meaningful distinction between intent and recklessness indeed the tennessee statute issue here separately defines intentional aggravated assault and reckless aggravated assault not surprisingly tennessee imposes stricter penalties on the former and so you know went to the extent again that we're talking about extreme recklessness which tends to come up primarily in the context of murder i think it would be entirely appropriate for the court either to reserve a question or even to indicate that extreme recklessness is tantamount to intent or knowledge the nd point i would make is again looking at the state statutes i really do think that once you start drawing the line between recklessness and negligence that these are really fine distinctions that involve the degree of risk the extent of awareness of risk and of course our fundamental submission to the court today is that if you agree as i think one respectfully must that this court in leah calle indicated that negligent offenses are excluded there's simply no way from the against the person of another phrase i guess what some of these hypotheticals that have been thrown your way make me think it's a daft phrase really just doesn't have anything to do with meant to write what it has something to do with  you know it has something to do with defining what the act is that it's an act directed at the person of another but is sort of indifferent to what the person's intent is so i was wondering whether you could respond to that i would make two points in response to that justice kagan the st picking up on something i said earlier is that in lia cow itself the court made clear that if you that language as defining the degree and i think that it's easiest to sort of understand that when you think about against not in isolation as the government would have you do but again when you think about using force against the person of another again if i throw a plate at a wall to try to head a spider and the plate hits my wife and i think an ordinary english speaker would say that you're using physical force against the spider and not against then i wan give you a couple of different hypotheticals and then this is a paradox it so the st one should be easy the st one i'm a bank robber and i'm running out of the bank and i really have to get out and hire any and my car is in a parking lot and i see that there's a man right behind to get out i'm going to run him over is that the use of physical force against the person of another yes it is because you're certain are practically certain that you're going to run over the man absolutely so now exact same fact except the person is eight feet away from the car so there's a very substantial risk that when i back up i'm going to hit him but it's possible that if the guy is looking just my way and if he's fast enough he's going to escape is that the use of physical force against a person of another i don't think so and and i think that it's true i think that's true for the reason that we've been discussing again i think that when you're using physical force against a person suggests the force is being directed at that person and i know this guy is standing six feet in back of day and he's going to have to be really lucky to get out of the way of my car he's going to be you know very lead to float and otherwise i'm going the risk and the risk may be very high but that is a meaningful distinction a lot and to respond just very briefly to your point about the actus reus justice kagan i think that if that were all that phrase were doing it's really impossible to make any sense out under your view it seems like in the reply brief you can see that almost but i'm not clear why yes i believe that it would and so let me just walk very briefly if i may just ask ourselves through these different states of mind knowledge doesn't frankly tend to come up as often with the sorts of offenses that the law generally treats intent and knowledge as affectively level one no no no that that's where you're wrong it certainly doesn't tort but the model firm distinction between them and it's true that sometimes a jury can infer intent from knowledge because very few defendants will admit they secretly harbored a nefarious intention and it's also true that me make one quick point in response to that as you please please i'm with my limited time just when you're talking about knowledge of the result as opposed to knowledge of some specific fact i think the law does treat the two as effectively equivalent when you act with knowledge that your conduct all right colonel how really don't want to get involved in that argument with you ok assume that intent knowledge are distinct mental elements and it can be maybe maybe the statue depends on looking at the rule of lenity start with the assumption that until congress tells us otherwise this has to be an intense statute i think with regard to offenses such as assault murder rape and the like the offenses that congress seemingly intended to cover and what you're really talking about is in that with exceptions that we've been talking about today but i would say that the distinction between intent and knowledge on  morning mr stanley gam if the statute said use of physical force period would that cover reckless offenses that would be textually equivalent to the statute  use of force against another does not cover reckless offenses i guess i'm just thinking that's a very strange line to draw and judge sutton for we these are very wise judges you know said sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation and it seems like you're trying to make sense of leah cowan was eating together the simplest and i think potentially the best explanation we get your reaction is negligent conduct does not use of force and reckless conduct is use of force for purposes of these statutes because i think to pick up on what justice thomas said it would be a bit wild to say reckless crimes are covered by use of force quote statutes but not by use of force against another and quote says he's so can you respond to that at justice kavanagh here's why i think the two statutes have to be interpreted differently it's because of negligent offenses i think that under the reasoning was seen if you were dealing with that statute section twenty two g nine which again came up in a very different context that i an offense would qualify as the use of force because the use of force in a case involving negligence is volitional by contrast it is clear that under the different language at issue here in the wake of this court's decision  a cow negligent offenses would be excluded and i think with respect i would rely on the reasoning of not judge sutton but judge careful edge relying on this distinction in the text and relying on the very important distinction opinion and i don't mean this is a got to point at all but just kind of an example of ordinary usage it describes the offense they are even though it didn't the statute didn't say against another on page one has any misdemeanor committed against a domestic relation on page four recklessly assaulting a domestic relation on page seven the harm such conduct causes the result of the delivered decision do in danger another assaults another page nine referring to mame says she had to recklessly injure another page twelve federal law applies to those with prior convictions for the use of physical force against a domestic relation the point being you were explaining the ordinary use of the phrase use of force it was describing it indistinguishable from use of force against another he responded that yes justice kavanagh very briefly i think that that is simply reflective of the fact that a force falls on the victim when you're dealing with a reckless offense like a negligent if out and again the court went on for pages about the distinct context of section nine  g nine which was to serve the public safety purpose of taking guns out of the hands of anyone who is a gauged in domestic abuse even misdemeanors  mind that we're talking here about felony assault and not about misdemeanor assault and in was seen to the extent that the court talked about this demeanor assault that was simply because that statute covered  misdemeanors with regard to felony assault itself the government correctly note that in a number of states around half of there are reckless felony assault offenses but in the majority of those states there are discrete assault offenses that could be committed intentionally or knowingly indeed that's true in tennessee as a lot of issue here reflects and the fundamental problem with the government's effort to turn this into a eight counting exercise like the wanted issue unforeseen is that here there is no evidence that congress ought to sweep in every variant of offenses such as robbery and felony assault as opposed to the most serious versions of those offenses those that are committed intentionally or knowingly and if i see in the court attached significant weight to the fact that if the defendant's interpretation were adopted section nine  nine would be affirmatively inoperative in a majority of the states that's clearly not true here and indeed for more than a decade we lived with our interpretation without any eviden define the object of force but here the word against is being used with use of force and that makes all the difference the government in its brief talks about the application of force it's certainly would be true that if you had a baseball against a windshield that the ball has hit the windshield but you wouldn't say that you used force against the windshield if your intent is not for the ball to land on the windshield we've been discussing which is that the government's position really fails to come to grips with how this court construed the materially identical statutory language in lia cal and again i think there's simply no way that that language can be construed to encompass r offenses but not negligent ones never mind unambiguously as the rule funded he would require i think the nd problem is that the government's interpretation would sweep in a host of unintentional and nonviolent offenses particularly reckless driving offenses which the united states code itself breaks out from crimes of violence and a mom who fails to buckle and her child and then gets into an accident is not the sort of offender who is likely to point a gun at someone in the future again  interpretation was the interpretation of the lower courts with no evidence difficulties for more than a decade and the court of appeals here should have followed thank you thank you counsel your faith in thank you mr chief justice and against domestic relation unquote it necessarily follows that recklessly causing injury to the person of another is the use of physical force against the person of another it makes no difference that in boise the phrase against domestic relations was the court's own descriptive language or hear the phrase against the person of another is congress's descriptive language no matter who says it as justice kagan pointed out it's a natural way to refer to the this court's decision is boys being back around principles of criminal law as to default state of liability and common sense of all groups knowingly causing injury with recklessly causing injury which by l it seems to me that you're putting an awful lot of weight on why genes the against domestic relation there was used in a sort of colloquial manner i think certainly not as a  technical statutory interpretation well your honor i heard my friend on the other side to say that he thinks when you add against the meaning thing is because it's plain that you couldn't possibly use this language  illustrate that plain meaning argument that he's making can't possibly be right because the language can be used in this way and congress did use the language that way that recklessness does cover a fairly broad range you know it does cover my swing a baseball bat that slips but as i think your friend on the other side just noted it can also cover things like you know failing to buckle in the child in the in the car seat or texting while driving and i don't think in any of those situations you would say that that's using force against that those those individuals well i have a couple of points your honor st was to driving examples we're not really talking about reckless driving in the abstract we're talking about cases someone's been charged with felony assault based on his or her conduct with a car and i think another will get maybe i'm wrong but don't people get charged with that in some instances when they're doing something like you know texting while driving or that sort of thing you're not going to say it's never happened but i think we describe it pages forty one to forty two of our brief i'm sorry just thirty eight to forty of our brief we describe  examples of reckless assault based on conduct with a car that they've been able to come up with and they're all much more extreme than that these are people who are vastly exceeding the speed limit through  described yes your honor and as the label i think one of the courts look at that as to the degree of force that doesn't make much sense to look at it as that man is reckless conduct like shooting into a crowded house that i think everyone would describe as violent and there's intentional conduct like an agatha christie style to date murder by poisoning someone that i don't think anyone would really describe as violent but that everyone agrees is covered by to counsel justice resolved any tension between poising and lee account because we've seen explains the reasoning and we count as simply a distinction between accidental offenses which would include negligent crimes and not accidental offenses which foreseen makes clear include reckless crimes it doesn't focus at all on the linguistic distinctions between the two statute and i'll get to that in one second why why though shouldn't matter but the reason we know that the reason for it being doesn't focus on that is because fourteen excepted that even under the statute issue in that case that  orses against a victim was required and that can be shown in the court's own example of someone who recklessly throws a plate at a wall it wasn't enough that the person knew or intended to use force against the plate the critical question for one of the main assault statute was covered was whether the person was reckless that a sharp on the plate might hit the domestic victim and the reason that the additional language doesn't matter is because it has independent weight my friend on the other side suggests that it has no meaning if it doesn't impose the targeting restriction that he would impose but it actually does two things st of all it makes sure that the injury is to a person and not the property but even as the similarly worded statutes that include both persons and property the requirement that it be against another is significant limitation it's why arson just not qualify as a crime give if the residual clause were still in the use and had not been done away with as unconstitutional leave a wouldn't that be a more natural place for this particular case or this charge so you know there's substantial overlap between the residual clause and the elements clause but they each have their distinct role and to the extent that my friend on the other side is suggesting that the residual cla of excluded or might not have i think the element clause here focuses on a crime but actually involves the use of force where someone is in this case actually injured and in those circumstances i think reckless no minimum to ten years to a fifteen year minimum to life and that happens where you have three prior crime definition that's a pretty serious consequence so this court i think has struggled to try to make sure the really bad things are in those three priors and not things that are not all right we had it and we said in the residual clause you have to have the vision to call it is close to what you are going to talk about a serious potential risk of physical injury and we said there and we're trying to get out of drunk driving because it just isn't right category given the statute why is this case a force your right well your honor in gave this court was considering a drunk driving be covered by the residual laws the nd thing that i would say is the court never result in whether the residual clause covers reckless offenses and if and so if it really mattered whether it did i don't think that necessarily cut in petitioner's favor but the rd thing i would say is even if you thought it didn't i think that actually makes our case wrong for because if we can't get in things like reckless murder under the residual clause been accomplished surely wanted to include them under the element was as i was saying to justice thomas the element of cause is more restricted in that it is directed at a cajuns where force is actually used whereas the residual clause and ultimately  difference between the words you used those used which were reckless murder with a car and the words i'm going to go old drunk driving i mean proceed to the residual clause and tried to figure out some way to group those or particular offense this together we don't have justice alito well it's always a pleasure to have another case involving the armed career criminal act it is a real it is real favorite do you think that call allows us to say that the against the phrase against the person of another does not speak at all to the question of your honor i think it may have some kind of contextual influence on men's ran but no more so than it had any more theme because in fourteen as i was saying earlier and in response to justice thomas you had a similar context where you needed somebody who is injured and i want to be quite clear that we really are only talking today about crimes that were acquired the actual causation of injury somebody actually was hurt and then were and then the defendant was reckless as to whether someone would get hurt because those are the set of primes that the court has in front of it today and only in crimes that involve the actual causation of injury would we even be able to prove that that force capable of causing pain or injury in fact play a you are you point out that if we adopt petitioners interpretation why st of all we've done a survey and these numbers are been approximately a bit approximate the were only aware of maybe a maximum of approximately ten or twelve states that have separate writing specific offenses that we think might even qualify as aca predicates and most of them spaced label those crimes vehicular assault or vehicular homicide and so they treat them much more seriously than they do kind of regular drunk driving and i guess the nd and related point i would make about that is to the extent that my friend whose position depends on these kind of isolated examples and seemingly innocuous conduct that might in theory be covered by one of the statute this poured in corals may recall that one of the major arguments made there was that there were seemingly innocuous ways to commit certain forms of burglary in the court looked at what congress was trying to do is a categorical matter and just because that can happen once doesn't mean it's going to happen three times to someone's post that they're classified under the aca and if you look at the set of court and to remember that judges always have the ability to decide somebody or to hold that reckless conduct doesn't qualify you quoting for your foreseen brief quote while both provisions contain the phrase use of physical force domestic violence provision and aca the misdemeanor crime of violence to sixteen definition which qualifies that the forces against the person or property of another uses the against phrase was crucial to leo calls holding which required a higher man shreya and yet today you're telling us that that i can't force directed against the person your honor i don't think that we place that amount of weight on the phrase in that case i think we noted that leak out had relied on it but i don't think we are placing this positive weight on it but even if you see some tension between our position in the we've seen and our position here today there's been a significant intervening event which is the decision in foreseen which i think clears up the misimpression that the courts of appeals those linguistic distinction or seen makes clear that what leak out was really about is the difference between accidental and reckless conduct and that's the exact line that the criminal law draws and there's a really good reason why the criminal law draws the line it's because it does not require the use of force against a person of another and it didn't happen to be negligence but a change higher focus was was the force directed at another person reading and this i suppose goes back to justice briar's questions because i think the argument might go or at least part of the argument might go that in aca one is defining what it means to be a violent felon for purposes imposing an extremely significant punishment whereas in this statute one is talking about mr meehan and and applying only a prophylactic rule about gun possession and further  as as much time talking about the effects of coming out the other way than it does about the test another way to basically says if we don't hold the way we are holding today this entire federal  rendered inoperative and and that seems very different no matter if you can come up with you know thirteen robbery statutes or something like that but it seems a stream lee a different consequence of a ruling so i guess i murder or robbery or a serious offense like that and we're not simply talking about cases where one crime makes all the difference and the rd the rd thing i would say is that if you hold for  petitioner in this case i think you're going to reintroduce the exact same anomaly that you avoided in point seen as we explain on page thirty six of our brief the still only worded elements clause in eighteen u s c sixteen which defines crime of violence is incorporated into the immigration and nationality act definition of crime of domestic violence and if these reckless primes are excluded then the thirty five  state misdemeanor assault offenses that the court focused on and foreseen wouldn't qualify under the immigration and nationality act either i think of be quite surprising to congress to find that fairly subtle change of wording one statute replier ing that is the crime be committed by a domestic relation then the other statute requiring that it be against the person of another make that big a difference as to whether the team worked as it in it was intended to that word is too narrow and it goes on to say the key phrase use of physical force against a person or property of another most naturally suggests a higher degree of intent and negligent or merely accidental suggesting that phrase has some work to do in mens reya and i guess i'm still struggling with how we put to take our precedents seriously we ignore that construction which isn't present in foreseen relevant but then i answer that it just relates to the object of the force runs directly counter to leave couse express instruction that it has something to say about men's rights and it also renders a as your friend pointed out that  there when we do about the rule of lenity and this statute is supposed to provide notice not to nine judges on the supreme court who are struggling with it but to ordinary americans and if we can't make heads or tails of it in every circuit to have addressed it up until recently came out against you why shouldn't we if congress wishes to legislate here for of course it may why shouldn't we here say the tie goes to the defendant the it and i think it would be quite anomalous to say that here as the rule of one application the rule of law many would require that the court is left to do nothing more than guess as to what congress intended i think it's particularly distinction recognized in league cal itself is between accidents and recklessness not recklessness and knowledge or intention in other words that leah cal stands for the idea that negligence doesn't come with in this kind of language that right that that's right your honor and i would as i was saying earlier i think the reason why that is true and comports with traditional criminal law principles where under the model penal code how much my friend is and relying model penal code is usually considered more important but you don't have to guess because you have was easy i guess to draw is that distinction so that's what i thought the distinction was between but as your brief said the other thing i wanted to get to is the notice point has been raised here and it seems to me that the notice in this kind of statute is a little bit different but  and this is more of a comment and you can fill in the gaps of it but we're not talking about a notice for committing reckless assault under tennessee law what we're talking about is someone who's been convicted three times for separate offenses under tennessee law or other state law to then after being convicted of three violent felonies knowing they shouldn't possess firearms nonetheless possess firearms on notice that they shouldn't possess firearms because they've been convicted of these prior offenses so you actually have to four times have committed some pretty significant violation before you fall  into the statute said i mean that's my understanding and i think that's an important point i noticed but you can elaborate if you wish you and i think that the exactly right and i think it's another point out emphasize here is of course the defendant knows it has at least one conviction he is undertaking a criminal act and so i think he is clearly is sufficiently on notice here and i think the court has understood that this phrase used the course and against the person of another to encompass the type of reckless conduct that we're talking about here i think one example is the court's own recent decision and still playing so playing recognize th robbery offense involving a struggle for an item at a spy's the elements now we wouldn't really say and if the force applied by a victim pulling on one end of the suitcases are good as are the force applied by defendant pulling on one end of a suitcase is targeted at the victim who's pulling on the other end as opposed to being targeted but the suitcase itself but still clings holding reflects that the offense nevertheless involves the use of force against the person of another because the defendant force acts against the victim that's the way congress meant the language that's the way the court understood it and still playing and i think it provides a person who understands english with fair notice  attempted and threatened makes sense when applied to reckless conduct your honor i think traditionally under the criminal law you can have an attempt to commit a crime with recklessness it's going to the elements of the attempt crime and the mens rea for the time prime are going to look somewhat different than the crime that actually achieved its completed result but i don't see any reason why and they haven't really given any reason for all three of these things has to track one another and even if it did threatening doesn't actually require intent to use force a simple bluff would suffice in those circumstance culpable as aca predicates but not cases in which someone has actually injured someone in knowing disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of doing so engrossed deviations from the it means it poses a conscious disregard of unknown risk you know how risky is the risk your honor i really don't think so because we're just talking about the standard definition of recklessness it's the exact combination of all those three things in particular is a practical evidence that there hasn't really been any problem was that shows that there's really no practical concerns here a craig thank you mr chief justice even petitioner doesn't really believe that the act is language requires our getting or all he's limited only to a specific intent crimes ng it wouldn't include knowledge or and this court made clear that the word used is synonymous with active employment and it would be very odd to say that someone recklessly actively employs force against another person and the government's effort today for the  st time in the case to suggest that against the person of another modifies force and not use of force is simply grammatically incorrect but more generally the government's position is breathtakingly overbroad the government itself cover every variant of robbery and of salt and there's no evidence to that effect it surely would have enumerated those offenses and it bears repeating that under our interpretation intentional or knowing variance of those offenses with still be fully covered the government's argument today really boils down to an argument that the court resolved and was seen a question that it expressed you have to open and that the court should affectively overrule we a cow at least as to negligent offens castleman this court already held that the statute issue here and the statute at issue and flies seen should be construed differently and might have their different contexts and it is deeply ironic that the government is here today saying that the two statutes should be construed the same way and was in the government included a seven page section in its brief seven pages arguing that the statute should be construed differently indeed oral argument gave the lawyer for the government conceded that even reckless homicide would not qualify under the force cause it's only been since the governor the court's decision and was seen that the government has been pushing me on slow and trying to do under the force cause what it can no longer do under the residual cause now that it has been invalidated as this court has said hi and again in its many cases this is a receipt of a statute that should be construed narrowly if a defendant is not subject to the aka he or she can still be subject to a sentence of up to ten years in prison and finally this is the herdeg matic case for the rule of lenity which justice kavanagh applies in the sentencing context no less than it does in the substantive criminal context where every court of appeals has construed a statute one way for more than a decade a defendant should not be subjected to a fifteen year mandatory minimum based on a decision involving a different statute that the government itself said should be interpreted differently the court of appeals interpretation rests entirely on an over reading of this court's decision in fuzzy and and in under a reading of this court's decision and made a cow and its judgment should be reversed thank you and also the case is submitted