Opinion ID: 1230087
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sexual Assaults

Text: At the time of his sentencing, Daye had three prior convictions for sexual assault of a child in violation of Vermont law. The statute under which he was convicted, captioned Sexual Assault, provided, in pertinent part, that: A person who engages in a sexual act with another person and ... (3) The other person is under the age of 16, except where the persons are married to each other and the sexual act is consensual; shall be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or fined not more than $10,000.00, or both. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 13, § 3252(3) (1986) (since amended). [5] The term sexual act was further defined to mean conduct ... consisting of contact between the penis and the vulva, the penis and the anus, the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the vulva, or any intrusion, however slight, by any part of a person's body or any object into the genital or anal opening of another. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 13, § 3251(1). [6] Engaging in a sexual act with a child under sixteen does not constitute burglary, arson, ... extortion, [or a crime] involv[ing] use of explosives, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), and the Government does not argue that Vermont's statute has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another, id. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i). Rather, the Government contends that engaging in a sexual act with a child in violation of former § 3252(3) involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), commonly described as the ACCA's residual clause, see, e.g., Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 689. Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Begay v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 1581, 170 L.Ed.2d 490 (2008), our inquiry into whether a proposed predicate conviction fell within the residual clause turned solely on whether the potential risk of physical injury posed by the crime at issue was comparable to that posed by the residual clause's exemplar crimes such as burglary, arson, and extortion. James, 550 U.S. at 203, 127 S.Ct. 1586. This inquiry did not require that every conceivable factual offense covered by a statute must necessarily present a serious potential risk of injury. Id. at 208, 127 S.Ct. 1586. Instead, the relevant consideration was whether the offense is of a type that, by its nature, presents such a risk  or, stated somewhat differently, whether the conduct encompassed by the elements of the offense, in the ordinary case, presents a serious potential risk of injury to another. Id. (emphasis added). The infliction of a sexual act upon a child by an adult clearly qualifies. [7] [C]rimes involving sexual contact with a child `typically occur in close quarters, and are generally perpetrated by an adult upon a victim who is not only smaller, weaker, and less experienced, but is also generally susceptible to acceding to the coercive power of adult authority figures.' United States v. Cadieux, 500 F.3d 37, 45 (1st Cir.2007) (quoting United States v. Sherwood, 156 F.3d 219, 221 (1st Cir.1998)); see also United States v. Mincks, 409 F.3d 898, 900 (8th Cir.2005) (Whether physical injury is intended when an adult engages in sexual intercourse or sodomy with a minor, physical injury is a serious potential risk arising from either of the assaults, and is logically foreseeable.). Physical injury is both a serious and foreseeable risk in the ordinary course of such encounters. We recognize that some of our sister Circuits have suggested that where, as here, a statute encompasses not only forcible assault but also sexual contact to which a child professes to consent, even if not legally able to do so, the crime thereby defined creates a serious risk of physical injury only when the victim is particularly young. See, e.g., United States v. Sawyers, 409 F.3d 732, 742 (6th Cir.2005) (holding that violations of statutory rape statutes that include more mature victims [(i.e. seventeen-year-olds)] and do not contain aggravating factors do not qualify as violent felonies, absent more specific information as to the age of the victim); United States v. Thomas, 159 F.3d 296, 299-300 (7th Cir.1998) (concluding that the Government had neglected to present evidence to establish a serious risk of injury to a child of sixteen, but noting that sexual contact does present such a risk to a child of thirteen). Vermont's statute, however, applies only to children and young teens  in the version applicable here, to those fifteen years old and younger. See Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 13, § 3252(3) (1986) (since amended). Even assuming, as these cases implicitly do, that only injury arising from the sexual act itself may be considered when determining whether the commission of the crime will typically involve a serious risk of physical injury, young teens such as those within the compass of Vermont's statute not infrequently face such risk from even purportedly consensual contact. See United States v. Sacko, 247 F.3d 21, 23-24 (1st Cir.2001) (summarizing evidence indicating that twelve to thirty-three percent of fourteen-year-old girls are not yet fully developed, and therefore face risk of physical injury from intercourse, as well as increased risk of contracting various sexually-transmitted diseases); see also United States v. Shannon, 110 F.3d 382, 387-88 (7th Cir.1997) (en banc) (noting risks of injury to thirteen-year-old girls from intercourse). More importantly, the potential risks of serious physical injury flowing from violation of Vermont's sexual assault statute are not limited to the direct physical consequences of sexual contact. We must also consider the risk of injury traceable to the fact that the violation of statutes criminalizing sexual contact with victims who, for reasons of physical or emotional immaturity, are deemed legally unable to consent  inherently involves a substantial risk that physical force may be used in the course of committing the offense. Chery v. Ashcroft, 347 F.3d 404, 408 (2d Cir.2003); see also James, 550 U.S. at 203, 127 S.Ct. 1586 (classifying attempted burglary as a violent felony primarily because of the risk of injury arising from the possibility of a face-to-face confrontation between the burglar and a third party). When an adult inflicts a sexual act upon a child, the nature of the conduct and the child's relative physical weakness give rise to a substantial likelihood that the adult may employ force to coerce the child's accession, thereby creating a serious risk that physical injury will result. See Dos Santos v. Gonzales, 440 F.3d 81, 85 (2d Cir.2006) ([B]ecause `[a] child has very few, if any, resources to deter the use of physical force by an adult intent on touching the child[,] there is a significant likelihood that physical force may be used to perpetrate the crime.' (second alteration in original) (quoting Chery, 347 F.3d at 409)); see also United States v. Eastin, 445 F.3d 1019, 1022 (8th Cir.2006) (Even if the sexual act with a child were consensual, such conduct between individuals of differing physical and emotional maturity carries a substantial risk that physical force may be used, causing injury to the child.). We therefore have no difficulty in concluding that a sexual act inflicted upon a child by an adult ordinarily creates a serious potential risk of physical harm to the child. But this does not end the matter. The Supreme Court's decision in Begay refined the analytical framework employed to determine whether a prior conviction constitutes an ACCA predicate, indicating that a particular crime does not necessarily constitute a violent felony simply because it presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another comparable to that posed by the exemplar crimes in 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). See Begay, 128 S.Ct. at 1584-85. Rather, the crime must also be roughly similar, in kind as well as in degree of risk posed, to the listed crimes, specifically burglary, arson, extortion, and crimes involving the use of explosives. Id. at 1585. Applying this standard, the Supreme Court concluded that driving under the influence of alcohol is not a violent felony because it differs from the listed crimes in that it does not typically involve purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct that makes more likely that an offender, later possessing a gun, will use that gun deliberately to harm a victim. Id. at 1586 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court noted that statutes that prohibit drunk driving, like crimes that impose strict liability, allow conviction for conduct [that] need not be purposeful or deliberate. Id. at 1586-87; see also Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 692 (holding that failure to report for incarceration does not constitute a violent felony because the crime amounts to a form of inaction, a far cry from the purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct potentially at issue when an offender [commits one of the expressly listed crimes] (internal quotation marks omitted)). This Court has not previously considered whether a conviction for violating any of the various state laws prohibiting sexual assault on a child constitutes a violent felony for the purpose of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). We have repeatedly addressed the question, however, whether engaging in sexual contact with a minor qualifies as a crime of violence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), which in relevant part defines the phrase to include felonies that, by their nature, involve[] a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense. [8] In Chery v. Ashcroft , this Court concluded that a conviction for engaging in sexual intercourse with a child who is at least thirteen but under the age of sixteen while being at least two years older than the child is a conviction for a crime of violence. See 347 F.3d at 408-09. In so doing, it distinguished Jobson v. Ashcroft, 326 F.3d 367, 372-76 (2d Cir.2003), and Dalton v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 200, 205-08 (2d Cir.2001), in which this Court determined, respectively, that reckless manslaughter and driving while intoxicated are not crimes of violence because they do not involve intentional and affirmative conduct, substantially decreasing the risk that force would be applied intentionally when committing those crimes. The Chery Court indicated that, in contrast, sexual intercourse with a minor requires affirmative conduct by the defendant (namely, sexual intercourse with a protected individual) that uniformly occurs in circumstances presenting the risk that force will intentionally be applied. 347 F.3d at 408-09. Subsequently, in Leocal v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court in effect adopted the reasoning of Dalton as to driving under the influence of alcohol, concluding that driving while intoxicated does not qualify as a crime of violence pursuant to § 16(b) as that crime involves merely accidental or negligent conduct, while the language of § 16(b) suggests that it encompasses a category of violent, active crimes requiring a higher mens rea  than mere negligence. See 543 U.S. 1, 10-11, 125 S.Ct. 377, 160 L.Ed.2d 271 (2004). Thereafter, this Court reaffirmed its reasoning in Chery, concluding that, like engaging in sexual intercourse with a minor, having contact with the intimate parts of a child under the age of sixteen is a crime of violence as it involves affirmative conduct in the form of the deliberate touching of [the child's] intimate parts. Dos Santos, 440 F.3d at 85. This type of conduct creates a risk, not generally present during the commission of a drunk driving offense, that the perpetrator will intentionally use force. See id. We find this analysis quite persuasive and applicable by analogy to the case at bar. [9] The statute under which Daye was convicted, Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 13, § 3252(3) (1986) (since amended), admittedly imposed strict liability with regard to the age of the victim. See State v. Searles, 159 Vt. 525, 621 A.2d 1281, 1283 (1993) (noting that statutory rape has traditionally been considered a strict liability offense and concluding that knowledge of the age of the victim was not an element of the statutory offense). By its terms, however, § 3252(3) involves deliberate and affirmative conduct  namely, an intentional sexual act with a person who is, in fact, under the age of consent  sufficient to satisfy Begay 's observation that violent felonies for purposes of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii)'s residual clause typically involve purposeful conduct. Moreover, as discussed above and in Chery and Dos Santos, crimes involving sexual contact between adults and children create a substantial likelihood of forceful, violent, and aggressive behavior on the part of the perpetrator because a child has essentially no ability to deter an adult from using such force to coerce the child into a sexual act. See Dos Santos, 440 F.3d at 85; see also Cadieux, 500 F.3d at 45; Eastin, 445 F.3d at 1022. Such likely use of force not only creates a risk of injury to the victim, but also establishes that the perpetrator will commonly act in a purposeful, violent, and aggressive manner. At a minimum, we have no doubt that a typical instance of this crime will involve conduct that is at least as intentionally aggressive and violent as a typical instance of burglary. See United States v. Almenas, 553 F.3d 27, 34 (1st Cir.2009). Both crimes may often involve, but do not necessarily require, the intentional use of force. Indeed, given the peculiar susceptibility of minors to coercion by adults into sexual acts, we think it more likely that violent and aggressive force will actually be employed in the course of committing the crime at issue here than in the course of committing an ordinary burglary. See Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 21-22, 105 S.Ct. 1694, 85 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985) (citing statistical evidence to the effect that burglaries only rarely involve physical violence). These conclusions are sufficient to establish that the crime at issue is a violent felony. Begay does not require that every instance of a particular crime involve purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct. Instead, all that is required is that a crime, in a fashion similar to burglary, arson, extortion, or crimes involving the use of explosives,  typically involve[s] purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct. Begay, 128 S.Ct. at 1586 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted); cf. Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 692 (noting that the conduct at issue with regard to a conviction for failure to report for incarceration is a far cry from the purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct potentially at issue when an offender [commits the expressly listed crimes] (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Indeed, the very crimes expressly named in § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) are not always purposeful, violent, and aggressive. See Begay, 128 S.Ct. at 1590-91 (Scalia, J., concurring) (noting that crimes involving the use of explosives may be committed recklessly or even negligently); United States v. Williams, 529 F.3d 1, 7 n. 7 (1st Cir.2008) (Burglary, for instance, can be described as purposeful but not, at least in most instances, as purposefully violent or necessarily aggressive.); 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 21.3 (2d ed.2008) (indicating that arson traditionally could be committed not only purposefully, but also wantonly by, for example, starting a fire where the act create[s] a very high risk of burning the dwelling house of another and the actor knew of that risk but nonetheless engaged in the risk-taking act). But see Begay, 128 S.Ct. at 1586 (noting that the word use ... most naturally suggests a higher degree of intent than negligent or merely accidental conduct as support for the proposition that the exemplar crimes  including crimes involving the use of explosive  typically involve purposeful conduct (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)). As a result, we conclude that engaging in a sexual act with a minor in violation of Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 13, § 3252(3) (1986) (since amended) satisfies the standard articulated in Begay and is therefore a violent felony under the residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). Neither the Fourth Circuit's decision in United States v. Thornton, 554 F.3d 443 (4th Cir.2009), nor the Tenth Circuit's decision in United States v. Dennis, 551 F.3d 986 (10th Cir.2008), both decided post- Begay, are contrary to the result reached here. In Thornton, the Fourth Circuit determined that the Virginia crime of carnal knowledge of a minor, which prohibits carnally know[ing], without the use of force, a child of thirteen or fourteen years of age, was not a violent felony for purposes of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). See 554 F.3d at 444-49 & n. 2; see also Va.Code Ann. § 18.2-63. But as that court noted, the Virginia statute at issue has as an element the lack of the use of force, eliminating the possibility that the typical instance of the crime would be violent or aggressive, even though deliberate. See Thornton, 554 F.3d at 448-49. Similarly, in Dennis, the Wyoming indecent liberties statute criminalized conduct involving substantially older victims and included conduct, such as the provision of pornography to a minor, that is less likely to present a serious risk of physical harm than is actually engaging in sexual contact. See 551 F.3d at 990 & n. 1 (holding that a conviction for knowingly taking immodest, immoral, or indecent liberties with a person under the age of eighteen, who may legally consent to sexual activity, as opposed to a more serious conviction for sexual intercourse with a person under the age of sixteen, who may not legally consent to sexual activity, does not involve a serious potential risk of physical injury to the minor). The present case is more akin to Williams, another post- Begay case, in which the First Circuit concluded that a conviction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a) for knowingly transporting a minor with intent that the minor engage in prostitution constitutes a violent felony, both because illicit sexual activity between an adult and a minor (at least a minor below a certain age) poses a significant risk that force will be used in the consummation of the crime and because an offender's behavior in exposing children to such encounters, even if not itself directly violent, is nevertheless purposeful, violent, and aggressive under the reasoning of Begay. See 529 F.3d at 5, 7-8. [10] As a final matter, Daye contends that the ACCA's residual clause applies only to property crimes, not to crimes against the person such as sexual assault. In support of this argument, he notes the Supreme Court's statement in Begay that, in enacting the most recent version of § 924(e)(2)(B), Congress sought to expand th[e] definition [of the term `violent felony'] to include both crimes against the person (clause (i) and certain physically risky crimes against property (clause (ii))). 128 S.Ct. at 1586; see also id. (noting that the applicable House Report described clause (ii) as including `State and Federal felonies against property such as burglary, arson, extortion, use of explosives and similar crimes as predicate offenses') (emphasis omitted) (quoting H.R.Rep. No. 99-849, at 5 (1986)). We find this argument unpersuasive. Despite the language cited by Daye, the Supreme Court did not rely in Begay on the distinction between property crimes and crimes against the person. Instead, as noted above, the Court focused upon whether the crime at issue typically involves purposeful, aggressive, and violent conduct. See id. at 1586-88. The distinction proposed by Daye also is not mandated by the language of § 924(e)(2)(B), which makes no mention of it. Although clause (i) of § 924(e)(2)(B) requires a crime to ha[ve] as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another, it encompasses not only pure crimes against the person, but also offenses such as robbery that, while typically considered to be property crimes, require at least the threatened use of force against another. See 3 LaFave, supra, § 20.3 (Robbery requires that the taking be done by means of violence or intimidation.). At the same time, the exemplar crimes listed in clause (ii) are not necessarily limited to property crimes. Crimes involving the use of explosives, for example, do[] not necessarily require use against property rather than use against a person. United States v. West, 550 F.3d 952, 967 (10th Cir.2008). Moreover, this Court has previously concluded (albeit prior to Begay ) that at least some non-property crimes fall within the ambit of the ACCA's residual clause, see, e.g., Lynch, 518 F.3d at 172-73 (concluding that criminal possession of a weapon with an intent to use it unlawfully against another in violation of N.Y. Penal Law § 265.03 constitutes a violent felony under the residual clause), and at least one of our sister Circuits has directly concluded, following Begay, that the scope of the residual clause is not limited to property crimes, see West, 550 F.3d at 965-68; see also Almenas, 553 F.3d at 35 (concluding that the residual clause of U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2, which is, in pertinent part, identical to § 924(e)(2)(B), encompasses both property crimes and crimes against the person). Accordingly, we conclude that the ACCA's residual clause is not limited only to property crimes, but rather encompasses both property crimes and crimes against the person that fulfill the requirements articulated in Begay.