Opinion ID: 1476696
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pre-Bradley decisions.

Text: Prior to our decision in Bradley, the question whether simple assault merges into attempted second-degree cruelty to children was one of first impression in this jurisdiction. Id., at 1160. The issue was raised, but not decided, in York v. United States, 803 A.2d 1009, 1012 (D.C.2002). The government points out that in ( Jonetta) Lee v. United States, 831 A.2d 378, 379 (D.C.2003), this court affirmed convictions of simple assault and attempted cruelty to children which arose from the same conduct. As the government acknowledges, however, the issue presented by Ms. Alfaro in this case was not raised at all in (Jonetta) Lee. Questions which merely lurk in the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents. Murphy v. McCloud, 650 A.2d 202, 205 (D.C.1994) (quoting Webster v. Fall, 266 U.S. 507, 511, 45 S.Ct. 148, 69 L.Ed. 411 (1925)). Because, in (Jonetta) Lee, the judicial mind was not asked to focus upon, and the opinion did not address, the point at issue ... [the (Jonetta) Lee ] decision lends no support to [the government's] position. Hicks v. United States, 658 A.2d 200, 202 (D.C.1995). [7] Ms. Alfaro relies in substantial part on two cases not addressed in Bradley. She claims that Beausoliel v. United States, 71 App. D.C. 111, 107 F.2d 292 (1939), and Carson v. United States, 556 A.2d 1076 (D.C.1989), cases which she describes as binding on the court, support her claim that her convictions of assault and attempted cruelty to children merge. Neither of these decisions, however, is dispositive of the issue now before us. In Beausoliel the defendant, who had exposed himself to a child, was convicted of assault. He contended on appeal that the assault statute did not apply to his conduct, but the court affirmed his conviction, holding that the defendant's actions constituted common law assault. The defendant was not prosecuted for cruelty to children, and the District's cruelty to children statute was not at issue in the case. Nevertheless, the court stated by way of dictum that the predecessor of our present cruelty statute, while not expressed in terms of assault, comes within the common law concept of that offense. Beausoliel, 107 F.2d at 296. [8] In Beausoliel, no question regarding the cruelty to children statute was presented to the court. The court was not asked to decide, and the judicial mind, Murphy, 650 A.2d at 205, certainly did not pass on, the question whether, when enacting the cruelty to children statute, the legislature intended or did not intend to criminalize, inter alia, maltreatment which causes emotional rather than physical harm to a child. The court did not examine the language or structure of the statute, and Beausoliel therefore cannot reasonably be understood to have decided the issue here presented. In Carson, this court stated that D.C.Code § 22-901 is a codification of the common law crime of assault on children. 556 A.2d at 1078. But in that case, as in Beausoliel, the language relied on had no bearing on the outcome of the case, and the court was not presented with, nor did it decide, the question whether the cruelty to children statute prohibits non-assaultive maltreatment of a child. The court did not identify or attempt to construe the statutory language applicable to the issue now before us. Even if the statements of the courts in Beausoliel and Carson connecting cruelty to children to common law assault could theoretically be read as suggesting, indirectly, that § 901(b)(1) proscribes only assaultive conduct and not mental cruelty, no such issue was before the court in either case. To suggest that these decisions mean what Ms. Alfaro says they mean takes each of them far beyond anything that the court could have contemplated in either case. Moreover, as we show below, the construction of the cruelty to children statute proposed by Ms. Alfaro is demonstrably contrary to its language and structure. [9]