United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted August 25, 2017*

Decided August 29, 2017

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 17-2251

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

EARNEST D. JOHNSON,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 01-CR-30140-MJR

Michael J. Reagan,

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

On the day Earnest Johnson was released from prison, he went to his mother’s 

house, banged on her door, and threatened to break her neck. The district court found 

that Johnson had committed assault and revoked his term of supervised release. We 

agree and affirm the judgment.

 

* We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the briefs 

and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would 

not significantly aid the court. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 17-2251 Page 2

In 2003 Johnson was convicted after a jury trial of bank robbery and using or 

carrying a firearm during that crime, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 2113(a),(d); 924(c)(1)(A). He was 

sentenced to 13 1⁄2 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ supervised release. After serving 

his prison term and two years of his term of supervised release, Johnson tested positive 

for cocaine. His release was revoked, and in early 2017 he was ordered to serve an 

additional 90 days’ imprisonment plus 90 days’ supervised release. 

Johnson began his second term of supervised release on April 21. Hours after he 

was freed, he paid his mother an unexpected and angry visit. Johnson’s mother, Sheila 

Young, testified at a revocation hearing that Johnson arrived and knocked on her door 

at around 6 p.m. She did not open the door because she was not dressed. She said that 

Johnson “threatened to burn down [the] house” and “tear up” her car while banging on 

her door. 

At that point Young began recording a video of Johnson on her phone through a 

window in the door. That video shows Johnson opening the screen door to Young’s 

house, shouting that he would “break [her] fuckin’ neck,” and asking, “You want me to 

come back over here, blow this mother fucker up? Stop fuckin’ playin’ with me.” Young 

testified that she felt scared for her life and called 911. 

The district judge concluded that Johnson had violated a condition of supervised 

release by committing the state crime of assault, see 720 ILCS 5/12-1 (defining assault as 

“knowingly engag[ing] in conduct which places another in reasonable apprehension of 

receiving a battery”); 720 ILCS 5/12-3 (defining battery as “knowingly without legal 

justification by any means (1) caus[ing] bodily harm to an individual or (2) mak[ing] 

physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with an individual”). The judge 

credited Young’s testimony about Johnson’s violent threats and found that he “was 

disruptive, he was belligerent, violent, truculent, combative.” Johnson’s conduct, the 

judge reasoned, “would place any reasonable person in apprehension of receiving a 

battery.” The judge imposed another 6 months’ imprisonment and 1 year of supervised 

release. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). 

On appeal Johnson argues that his conduct did not amount to assault under 

Illinois law. He argues that because Young was behind a locked door, his actions did 

not place her in reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery, as required by Illinois 

law, see Kijonka v. Seitzinger, 363 F.3d 645, 647 (7th Cir. 2004); People v. Floyd, 663 N.E.2d

74, 76 (Ill. App. Ct. 1996); People v. Kettler, 459 N.E.2d 7, 10–11 (Ill. App. Ct. 1984).

Johnson asserts that he was “not trying to knock down the door or otherwise gain 
No. 17-2251 Page 3

entry” and that no reasonable person behind a locked door could fear an imminent 

battery from someone “merely shouting” on the other side. 

We disagree. Johnson was not “merely shouting.” His mother testified that 

Johnson was banging on the door, and that his shouts were explicit, angry threats. He 

screamed insults and threatened to break Young’s neck if she “didn’t stop playin’” with 

him. Young reasonably feared that he would break into the house and batter her. That 

was not the kind of “merely verbal threat of indefinite action in the indefinite future” 

that cannot constitute assault. See Kijonka, 363 F.3d at 647. 

The locked door between the angry defendant and his mother does not 

undermine the reasonableness of her fear. Illinois courts have held that a defendant did 

not place a victim in reasonable fear of a battery when the defendant was strapped to a 

hospital bed at the time, see Kettler, 459 N.E.2d at 10–11, or when the defendant was 

separated from the victim by airlock doors in a public place and the defendant made no 

threatening gesture or attempt to open the doors, see People v. Taylor, 35 N.E.3d 171, 175 

(Ill. App. Ct. 2015). Johnson’s threats were not so empty as these. Houses often are 

broken into, and by banging on the door, Johnson backed up his verbal threats with a 

threatening gesture. Moreover, the hostility and temperament displayed during an 

incident can support a finding that a victim had a reasonable fear of receiving a battery. 

See People v. Ferguson, 537 N.E.2d 880, 882 (Ill. App. Ct. 1989). And Young, being 

Jackson’s mother, knew he had just been released from prison and presumably knew he 

had committed a violent crime before. 

The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Johnson committed 

an assault. The commission of that assault violated the mandatory condition of 

supervised release forbidding Johnson from committing another federal or state crime. 

Johnson’s breach of that condition provided an ample basis to revoke his supervised 

release. 

AFFIRMED.