Opinion ID: 4200163
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Florida Caselaw

Text: By its plain terms, felony battery in violation of Florida Statute § 784.041 requires the use of physical force as defined by Curtis Johnson. To be convicted under § 784.041, an offender must intentionally use force—a touch or a strike— that is against the victim’s will and that causes the victim to suffer great bodily harm. See Fla. Stat. § 784.041(1). As noted, we conclude that intentional force— even of the touching variety—that in fact causes “great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement,” as required to sustain a conviction under § 784.041, necessarily constitutes force that is capable of causing pain or injury. Moreover, Florida courts have emphasized that “great bodily harm” in this context does not include “slight, trivial, minor, or moderate harm.” E.A. v. State, 599 So. 2d 251, 252 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 1992) (discussing the meaning of great bodily harm as used in Florida’s aggravated battery statute) (quotation omitted). For example, “mere bruises as are likely to be inflicted in a simple assault and battery” do not satisfy the great bodily harm element. Id. (quotation omitted); see also Smith v. State, 175 So. 3d 906, 907 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2015) (noting that Florida courts have defined great bodily harm to exclude slight or trivial harm); Gordon v. State, 126 So. 3d 292, 295 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 2011) (finding insufficient evidence of great bodily harm where the defendant struck the victim one time with a belt, 19 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 20 of 67 causing bruises that healed without requiring medical treatment); Nguyen v. State, 858 So. 2d 1259, 1260 (Fla. 1st D.C.A. 2003) (finding insufficient evidence of great bodily harm where the defendant shot the victim with a stun gun, causing burn marks but no lasting ill effects). In short, slight discomfort and minor injuries do not satisfy the great bodily harm element of § 784.041. See E.A., 599 So. 2d at 252; Smith, 175 So. 3d at 907. Instead, that element requires that the defendant inflict a severe physical injury on the victim. See E.A., 599 So. 2d at 252. In addition, Florida caselaw confirms that the statute categorically requires the use of physical force. The most relevant Florida caselaw arises in the context of the state’s Prison Releasee Reoffender (PRR) and Violent Career Criminal (VCC) statutes, which provide for an enhanced sentence when a prison releasee commits, or when a defendant to be sentenced previously has been convicted of, a felony that “involves the use or threat of physical force or violence against an individual.” See Fla. Stat. § 775.082(9)(a)(1) (defining the term “prison releasee reoffender” to include a defendant who commits a felony that involves the use or threat of physical force or violence within three years of being released from a state correctional facility); id. § 775.084(1)(d)(1)(a) (defining the term “violent career criminal” to include a defendant who has been convicted three times of any forcible felony); id. § 776.08 20 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 21 of 67 (defining “forcible felony” to encompass a felony that “involves the use or threat of physical force or violence”). As interpreted by the Florida courts, the physical force clause of the PRR and the VCC is materially indistinguishable from the federal elements clause. Florida courts apply a categorical approach to determine whether an offense qualifies for an enhancement under the clause, and they narrowly construe the clause to require that, similar to the federal elements clause, a qualifying offense have as a statutory element the use or threat of physical force. See Perkins v. State, 576 So. 2d 1310, 1313 (Fla. 1991). In addition, and consistent with the definition of physical force articulated in Curtis Johnson, the Florida Supreme Court has defined physical force as used in the PRR and VCC statutes to require more than mere touching. See Hearns, 961 So. 2d at 218–19. As the Florida Supreme Court explained in Hearns, “minor infractions” such as tapping a person on the shoulder without consent are “incompatible with the level of force” contemplated by the PRR and VCC statutes, and thus do not constitute physical force for purposes of those statutes. Id. at 219. Since Hearns, and with the benefit of its reasoning, the Florida appellate courts uniformly have concluded that felony battery as defined by Florida Statute § 784.041 categorically qualifies as a predicate under the PRR and VCC statutes because it “cannot be committed without the use of physical force or violence.” 21 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 22 of 67 Dominguez v. State, 98 So. 3d 198, 200 (Fla. 2d D.C.A. 2012); see also Brooks v. State, 93 So. 3d 402, 403 (Fla. 2d D.C.A. 2012) (holding that felony battery in violation of § 784.041 is a qualifying offense for PRR sentencing); State v. Williams, 9 So. 3d 658, 660 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2009) (noting that § 784.041 cannot be violated “without the use or threat of physical force or violence” (internal quotation marks omitted)). In reaching this conclusion, the Florida courts have distinguished between simple battery under § 784.03, which requires nothing more than a slight unwanted touch, and felony battery under § 784.041, which requires a touch or strike sufficient to inflict great bodily harm. Compare Williams, 9 So. 3d at 660 (clarifying that when the statutory elements of § 784.041 are satisfied, felony battery qualifies for PRR sentencing), and Spradlin v. State, 967 So. 2d 376, 378 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2007) (holding that a second offense of simple battery, which is punished as a felony but only requires nominal contact as defined by Florida Statute § 784.03, does not necessarily involve physical force and thus does not qualify for PRR sentencing). We draw the same distinction, and reach the same conclusion. Simple battery in violation of Florida Statute § 784.03, which is satisfied by a slight unwanted touch, does not require the use of force capable of causing pain or injury and thus does not qualify as a predicate under the federal elements clause. On the other hand, felony battery, which includes the additional element that the touch or 22 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 23 of 67 strike in fact cause significant physical injury, necessarily requires the use of force capable of causing pain or injury and therefore does so qualify. Vail-Bailon argues that the cited Florida caselaw is irrelevant to whether Florida felony battery qualifies as a predicate under § 2L1.2 because that question is governed by federal law. Of course, federal law rather than Florida law determines the meaning of physical force as that term is used in the federal elements clause. See Curtis Johnson, 559 U.S. at 138. For that reason, we apply the definition of physical force provided by the Supreme Court in Curtis Johnson to determine whether Florida felony battery satisfies the elements clause. Furthermore, we recognize that we are not bound by the Florida courts’ interpretation of a state sentencing provision that is similar—or even identical—to the federal elements clause. See id. But state law does determine the elements of the underlying state statute at issue. Id. See also Romo-Villalobos, 674 F.3d at 1249 (“While [Curtis] Johnson proscribes us from relying on state case law to determine whether a crime requires violent force, it expressly directs us to look at state cases to determine the elements of the state offense.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). That being so, it is significant that (1) in applying a definition of physical force that is consistent with the definition set forth in Curtis Johnson (2) in the context of a state sentencing provision that is indistinguishable from the federal 23 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 24 of 67 elements clause, (3) Florida courts have held that felony battery in violation of Florida Statute § 784.041 “cannot be committed without the use of physical force or violence.” Dominguez, 98 So. 3d at 200. Likewise, given the Florida Supreme Court’s guidance in Hearns that the PRR and VCC statutes are not intended to encompass “minor infractions” that are “incompatible” with the degree of force contemplated by those statutes, it is noteworthy that Florida appellate courts uniformly have held that Florida felony battery qualifies as a predicate offense for PRR and VCC sentencing purposes. Alternatively, Vail-Bailon argues that we should ignore the Florida appellate cases because he thinks they reached the wrong decisions. We disagree that the courts reached the wrong decision or that we could disregard their decisions even if we thought them wrong. These appellate decisions are controlling as to this issue absent “some persuasive indication that the [Florida Supreme Court] would decide the issue differently.” Hill, 799 F.3d at 1322 (internal quotation marks omitted). There is no such indication here. Vail-Bailon contends that the appellate cases conflict with Hearns, but Hearns is easily distinguishable. In Hearns, the Florida Supreme Court held that battery on a law enforcement officer did not necessarily involve physical force because, like simple battery, it could be accomplished by “any intentional touching, no matter how slight.” Hearns, 961 So. 2d at 218. That holding is entirely consistent with Dominguez, Williams, and Brooks because, in 24 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 25 of 67 order to be convicted of felony battery under Florida Statute § 784.041, the defendant must touch or strike the victim in a manner that causes not just offense or slight discomfort but great bodily harm. See E.A., 599 So. 2d at 252. Indeed, as noted, the Florida appellate courts have on this basis distinguished felony battery from simple battery for purposes of the PRR and VCC statutes. See Williams, 9 So. 3d at 659–60 (distinguishing the defendant’s felony battery conviction under § 784.041 from the second offense simple battery conviction at issue in Spradlin). 2. The hypotheticals proffered by Vail-Bailon do not alter our conclusion. Contrary to every Florida court that has considered the issue, Vail-Bailon argues that Florida felony battery does not categorically require the use of physical force because it is possible for an offender to violate Florida Statute § 784.041 by engaging in conduct that consists of no more than a slight touch or nominal contact. In support of this argument, Vail-Bailon proffers the following hypotheticals: (1) an offender lightly taps on the shoulder a victim who happens to be standing at the top of a staircase, startling the victim, who then falls down the stairs and suffers grievous injury; (2) an offender tickles a victim who is standing near an open window, startling the victim, who then hurtles through the open window and suffers severe injury; and (3) an offender applies a seemingly innocuous lotion onto the skin of a victim who has an unknown allergy, unexpectedly triggering an allergic reaction that results in serious injury. 25 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 26 of 67 According to Vail-Bailon, because the offender in each of these scenarios could conceivably be prosecuted under Florida Statute § 784.041, even though the force used by the offender is minimal, the statute therefore flunks the physical force test. The defendant in the Douglas case made essentially the same arguments, and the Seventh Circuit rejected these farfetched hypotheticals, as do we. First, there is no support in Florida law for the idea that Florida Statute § 784.041 is designed to criminalize the conduct described in the proffered hypotheticals. See Douglas, 858 F.3d at 1071 (rejecting a similar “tickling” argument and noting that the defendant “ha[d] not located any decision in which Indiana’s courts have convicted someone of committing [the serious bodily injury version of] felony battery after a light touch initiates a long causal chain that ends in serious injury”). To our knowledge, there is likewise no case in which tapping, tickling, or lotion-applying—or any remotely similar conduct—has been held to constitute a felony battery under Florida Statute § 784.041. Rather, the real-world examples of Florida felony battery we are aware of all involve conduct that clearly required the use of physical force, as defined by Curtis Johnson. 17 See, e.g., Williams, 9 So. 3d at 659 (biting the victim with such force that the resulting 17 As did Vail-Bailon’s conduct in this case. According to the description of the underlying facts in his PSR, Vail-Bailon, after an argument with his wife, broke down her bedroom door and “choked, strangled, and punched her multiple times,” repeatedly stating, “You destroyed my life,” and “I will kill you.” When his wife fled to seek help, Vail-Bailon “grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back to the house” while repeatedly punching her in the head and face. 26 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 27 of 67 laceration required emergency medical treatment); Lewis, 817 So. 2d at 933 (punching the victim in the face “with a force that required stitches and left a scar”); Harris v. State, 111 So. 3d 922, 923–24 (Fla. 1st D.C.A. 2013) (grabbing the victim, pushing her, sitting on her chest, and strangling her with sufficient force to break her clavicle). For sure, several of these cases involve touching, but not of the tapping or tickling variety. Rather, the type of touching that has resulted in felony battery convictions is more along the lines of strangling, dragging, and biting. See Williams, 9 So. 3d at 659; Harris, 111 So. 3d at 923–24. Nor has Vail-Bailon shown that prosecution under Florida Statute § 784.041 for the conduct described in the hypotheticals is a realistic probability. The hypotheticals involve relatively benign conduct combined with unlikely circumstances and a bizarre chain of events that result in an unforeseeable injury: the ticklee is standing at an open window, the tapped person is so startled that he careens down a flight of stairs, the recipient of the lotion has an unknown allergy (and apparently stands still long enough to allow the perpetrator to spread said lotion on his body). As discussed, felony battery differs from aggravated battery in that felony battery is a general intent crime. See Lewis, 817 So. 2d at 934. In other words, the prosecution is not required to prove that the defendant had the specific intent to cause the level of physical harm that the victim suffered in order to sustain a conviction for felony battery. See id.; T.S., 965 So. 2d at 1290. But there is no 27 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 28 of 67 support in Florida law for the argument that felony battery has been applied to penalize freak accidents of the sort that Vail-Bailon concocts. Indeed, the Supreme Court has cautioned that the need to focus on the least culpable conduct criminalized by a statute “is not an invitation to apply ‘legal imagination’” to the statute. Moncrieffe, 133 S. Ct. at 1684–85 (noting that “there must be a realistic probability, not a theoretical possibility, that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside” the qualifying definition of a predicate crime (citing Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 193 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted))). See also James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 208 (2007) (explaining that the categorical approach does not require that “every conceivable factual offense” must qualify), overruled on other grounds by Samuel Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). The hypotheticals proffered by Vail-Bailon—all of which pose highly improbable ways of inflicting severe physical injury on a victim—reflect little more than the verboten legal imagination proscribed in the above Supreme Court decisions. Accord United States v. Redrick, 841 F.3d 478, 484–85 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (characterizing as “farfetched” the argument that robbery with a deadly weapon could be committed with weapons such as poison or lethal bacteria, which would not supply the requisite physical force necessary to satisfy the ACCA’s elements clause); United States v. Hill, 832 F.3d 135, 141 (2d Cir. 2016) (rejecting the 28 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 29 of 67 argument that Hobbs Act robbery could be committed by putting a victim in fear of injury to his property through non-forceful means such as “threatening to throw paint on the victim’s house, to spray paint his car, or, most colorfully, to pour chocolate syrup on his passport” (alteration adopted and internal quotation marks omitted)). In short, Vail-Bailon’s florid exercise of legal imagination does not provide a persuasive basis upon which to conclude that Florida felony battery lacks the requirement of physical force necessary to satisfy the elements clause of § 2L1.2. 3. Our conclusion is consistent with Leocal. Finally, we reject Vail-Bailon’s argument that a conviction under Florida Statute § 784.041 cannot satisfy the elements clause under the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004). The defendant in Leocal was convicted of DUI causing serious bodily injury in violation of Florida Statute § 316.193(3)(c)(2). The Supreme Court held that the conviction did not qualify as a crime of violence under the elements clause of 18 U.S.C. § 16 because the Florida DUI statute does not require that the defendant intentionally use any force at all against another person, but rather only that the defendant operate a vehicle while under the influence and thereby cause serious bodily injury to a person he accidentally, or perhaps negligently, hits with the vehicle. Leocal, 543 U.S. at 7. The Court explained that the “use” of physical force “suggests a higher degree of 29 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 30 of 67 intent than negligent or merely accidental conduct” and that, as used in a provision describing crimes of violence, the term physical force “suggests a category of violent, active crimes that cannot be said naturally to include DUI offenses.” Id. at 9, 11. The Court’s concern in Leocal—that the DUI crime at issue did not require the intentional use of any force at all, and that a defendant might be convicted of it after engaging in accidental or at most negligent conduct—is not a concern here. As Douglas noted in rejecting a similar Leocal challenge, “Indiana’s statute makes intent to use force an element of the offense; that satisfies the elements clause as Leocal understands it.” Douglas, 858 F.3d at 1072. Likewise, by its terms, Florida Statute § 784.041 requires an intentional use of force—a touch or a strike—that is against the victim’s will and that causes the victim to suffer great bodily harm. Fla. Stat. § 784.041(1). And, unlike the DUI offense at issue in Leocal, felony battery is exactly the type of “violent, active crime[]” that the elements clause is designed to encompass. Leocal, 543 U.S. at 11. Accordingly, our conclusion that felony battery in violation of § 784.041 qualifies as a crime of violence under the elements clause of § 2L1.2 comports with the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Leocal. See Douglas, 858 F.3d at 1072 (explaining that Leocal does not help a defendant who is prosecuted under a statute that “applies only to a person who 30 Case: 15-10351 Date Filed: 08/25/2017 Page: 31 of 67 knowingly or intentionally touches another person in a forbidden manner” (internal quotation marks omitted)).