Opinion ID: 199640
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Offensive Physical Contact.

Text: 53 This leaves the question whether offensive physical contact under Maine's general-purpose assault statute necessarily involves the use of physical force. For ease in analysis, we divide this type of contact into two groupings: (1) contacts with another person's body, and (2) contacts with objects intimately connected with another person's body. 54 Our assessment of offensive physical contacts with another person's body follows the same lines as our assessment of bodily injury assaults. As the court below perspicaciously observed, contacts of this sort invariably emanate from the application of some quantum of physical force, that is, physical pressure exerted against a victim. Nason, slip op. at 6. Therefore, offensive physical contacts with another person's body categorically involve the use of physical force (and, hence, qualify as misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence under section 922(g)(9) if perpetrated against domestic partners). 55 We think that the same logic extends to offensive physical contacts with objects connected to a person. The Law Court has transplanted into the soil of Maine's general-purpose assault statute the meaning of offensive physical contact developed in the context of civil battery. Rembert, 658 A.2d at 658. In adopting this approach, the court stressed that: 56 Unpermitted and intentional contacts with anything so connected with the body as to be customarily regarded as part of the other's person and therefore as partaking of its inviolability is actionable as an offensive contact with his person. There are some things, such as clothing or a cane or, indeed, anything directly grasped by the hand which are so intimately connected with one's body as to be universally regarded as part of the person. 57 Id. (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 18 cmt. c). 58 The Rembert court concluded that contacts with objects intimately connected with another individual's body were actionable under the offensive physical contact branch of Maine's general-purpose assault statute. See id. Like physical contact with the body itself, physical contact with a physical object, such as a cane, inevitably entails the application of physical pressure. Accordingly, we conclude that offensive physical contacts with objects intimately connected to another person's body necessarily require the application of physical force for their completion (and, hence, assaults of that genre, resulting in convictions under Maine's general-purpose assault statute, qualify as misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence under section 922(g)(9) if perpetrated against domestic partners). 59 The only other adjudication of a comparable claim by a federal appellate court supports this conclusion. In United States v. Smith, 171 F.3d 617 (8th Cir. 1999), the court of appeals pondered whether a conviction based upon Iowa's misdemeanor assault statute qualified as a predicate offense for purposes of section 922(g)(9). One prong of the statute covered [a]ny act which is intended to cause pain or injury to, or which is intended to result in physical contact which will be insulting or offensive to another. . . . Iowa Code § 708.1(1). The defendant complained that physical force was not a formal element of section 708.1(1), and, accordingly, that a conviction under it could not constitute a predicate offense within the purview of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9). This was so, the defendant said, because the Iowa statute encompassed physical contact that was merely insulting or offensive. Smith, 171 F.3d at 621 n.2. The Eighth Circuit dismissed that plaint out of hand, concluding that physical contact [that is insulting or offensive], by necessity, requires physical force to complete. Id. We agree with this conclusion. 60 To say more on this topic would be supererogatory. The short of it is that both variants of assault regulated under Maine's general-purpose assault statute necessarily involve the use of physical force. As a result, all convictions under that statute for assaults upon persons in the requisite relationship status qualify as misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence within the purview of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9). To be precise, if a malfeasant convicted under Maine's general-purpose assault statute is connected with the victim through any of the domestic relationships enumerated in section 922(g)(9), then federal law bars the malfeasant from possessing firearms and subjects him to criminal penalties for violating this proscription. Consequently, the appellant, who admittedly possessed a rifle after having pleaded guilty to violating Maine's general-purpose assault statute by assaulting his wife, was lawfully convicted on the federal charge. 6