Opinion ID: 783029
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Domestic Relationship

Text: 7 The Wyoming crime to which Belless pleaded guilty does not include as an element that the victim share one of the domestic relationships specified in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33)(A)(ii) with the perpetrator. It says only that A person is guilty of battery if he unlawfully touches another in a rude, insolent or angry manner or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to another. 5 One who engages in conduct that violates the statute is guilty of the crime whether the victim is a spouse or a perfect stranger. Belless argues that the federal statute requires the state statute to include an element that the crime be committed by a current or former spouse. 8 The federal statute does not require that the misdemeanor statute charge a domestic relationship as an element. It requires only that the misdemeanor have been committed against a person who was in one of the specified domestic relationships. It is uncontested in this case that the victim named in the Wyoming citation, Kristen Belless, was Belless's wife, but he could have been convicted of the crime even had he grabbed a perfect stranger by the arm and angrily shoved him against his car. We find no indication that Congress intended to exclude from the misdemeanors that may trigger 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33)(A)(ii) those crimes that are in fact committed against persons who have a domestic relationship specified in the statute, even if the triggering crime does not include such a relationship as an element. Our construction is consistent with the position taken by all seven of our sister circuits to have spoken to the issue. 6 9 We look first to the text and plain meaning of the federal statute. 7 First, the grammar and syntax of the federal statute do not require that the domestic relationship be an element of the predicate misdemeanor. The definition says has as an element, not, for instance, has as elements, indicating that it speaks only of a single element rather than in the plural. Immediately following the word element is the phrase use or attempted use of physical force or threatened use of a deadly weapon. This is a discrete attribute that clearly qualifies as an element of the underlying crime. After that comes a second, distinct attribute — the domestic relationship. The amount of force used and the relationship between the aggressor and victim are two very different things, and thus would constitute two different elements. Since the statute only requires one element, we read it to require only the one immediately following the word element in the statute — i.e., the use of physical force. The First Circuit uses this analysis, reading the singular ... to refer only to the immediately following attribute. 8 10 We agree with the D.C. Circuit that to read the committed by phrase as modifying the phrase that immediately precedes it (the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon) would be grammatically unsound. 9 Such a reading would treat the entire subsection as a single element with two descriptive criteria. However, as the D.C. Circuit noted, the statute should be read from the beginning to form a complete sentence, and the committed by phrase is best understood to modify the word offense at the beginning of this section of the statute. One can commit a crime or an offense, but one does not commit force or use, much less an element. 11 In short, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence means an offense that is a misdemeanor, has, as an element, the use of force and was committed by a person with the requisite relationship. An illustration using simpler language demonstrates the point. If the statute read larceny means an offense that has, as an element, monetary gain, committed by a person ..., it would be obvious that committed modifies offense and that monetary gain is the only element. Just as monetary gain is not committed, the use of force is not committed. The offense is committed. 10 12 True, in making element singular, Congress could have made a syntactical error. 11 Syntax cannot always control construction. The legislative process may have subordinated clear writing to some other goal. We must examine the meaning of the words to see whether one construction makes more sense than the other as a means of attributing a rational purpose to Congress. 12 The purpose of the statute is to keep firearms out of the hands of people whose past violence in domestic relationships makes them untrustworthy custodians of deadly force. That purpose does not support a limitation of the reach of the firearm statute to past misdemeanors where domestic violence is an element of the crime charged as opposed to a proved aspect of the defendant's conduct in committing the predicate offense. The more traditional criminal statutes criminalize violence regardless of the victim's relationship to the perpetrator, so many cases of domestic violence will be prosecuted under statutes that do not specify a domestic relationship as an element. 13 13 The alternative reading has some force. We might suppose that Congress did indeed make a error in syntax, and may have intended to limit predicate offenses to those with a domestic element, both to avoid questions years later about what the relationship might have been between the perpetrator and the victim, and to spur states to pass statutes that expressly focus on domestic violence. The argument for so construing the statute, however, is not so compelling as to persuade us to depart from the views of all the other circuits to rule on the issue. 14 Thus we reject Belless's argument that the federal statute requires that the predicate offense have the domestic relationship as an element.