Opinion ID: 3039321
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Recent Interpretations of Leocal

Text: [7] Although the Court in Leocal expressly reserved the question whether crimes of violence can include offenses involving the reckless use of force, see id. at 384, two of our sister circuits have interpreted the reasoning of Leocal to place such offenses beyond the reach of 18 U.S.C. § 16.8 In Bejarano-Urrutia v. Gonzales, 413 F.3d 444 (4th Cir. 2005), a native and citizen of Mexico petitioned for review of an order that he be removed from the United States for having committed involuntary manslaughter by driving intoxicated. Id. at 445. The Virginia statute of conviction required reckless disregard for human life, but not necessarily reckless disregard for whether force would be used. Id. at 447. Thus, the court was not required to decide whether offenses requiring the reckless use of force, or reckless disregard for a risk that force might be used, can be crimes of violence. See id. Nevertheless, the court deemed Leocal controlling: 8 In so doing, these circuits joined three other circuits that, even before Leocal, restricted the category of crimes of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 16 to crimes requiring specific intent to use force against a person or property. See Jobson v. Ashcroft, 326 F.3d 367, 373-74 (2d Cir. 2003); BazanReyes v. INS, 256 F.3d 600, 610-11 (7th Cir. 2001); United States v. Chapa-Garza, 243 F.3d 921, 926-27 (5th Cir. 2001). FERNANDEZ-RUIZ v. GONZALES 17865 [T]he conclusion of the Leocal Court that “[i]n no ‘ordinary or natural’ sense can it be said that a person risks having to ‘use’ physical force against another person in the course of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and causing injury” strongly indicates that the result in Leocal would have been the same even had a violation of the statute there at issue required recklessness rather than mere negligence. Id. (citation omitted). Applying this reading of Leocal, the Fourth Circuit granted the petition for review. Id. The Third Circuit has on three occasions endorsed a similar reading of Leocal—beginning with Tran v. Gonzales, 414 F.3d 464 (3d Cir. 2005). Tran involved the petition for review of a Vietnamese citizen ordered removed from the United States for having been convicted, under Pennsylvania law, of “conspiracy to commit reckless burning or exploding.” Id. at 468. The Tran court began its assessment of whether reckless burning or exploding was a crime of violence by citing dictionary definitions of “use.” Id. at 470. An “obvious commonality” among these definitions was that “the ‘use’ of force means more than the mere occurrence of force; it requires the intentional employment of that force, generally to obtain some end.” Id. (emphasis added). In concluding that mere recklessness was insufficient under such a standard, the Tran court expressly disagreed with our decision in Trinidad-Aquino. Id. Trinidad-Aquino, the court suggested, could not be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s emphasis in Leocal that “ ‘use’ requires active employment.” Id. (quoting Leocal, 543 U.S. at 9 (emphasis added)). Accordingly, the court granted Tran’s petition for review. Id. at 473. The Third Circuit reaffirmed its interpretation of Leocal in another immigration case, Popal v. Gonzales, 416 F.3d 249 (3d Cir. 2005). In Popal, the offense at issue was Pennsylvania’s misdemeanor simple assault offense. Id. at 253. The stat17866 FERNANDEZ-RUIZ v. GONZALES ute of conviction required a minimum culpability of recklessness. Id. at 254.9 In granting the petition for review, the Popal court both reaffirmed the reasoning of Tran and rejected a contrary argument based on the legislative history of 18 U.S.C. § 16(a). See Popal, 416 F.3d at 254-55. A Senate Report discussing the crime of violence definition now codified at 18 U.S.C. § 16(a) suggested this definition “would include a threatened or attempted simple assault or battery on another person.” S. Rep. No. 98-225, at 307 (1983), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3487. In reference to this suggestion, the Popal court stated: We acknowledge that the legislative history of § 16(a) provides some support for the government’s theory that that section encompasses simple assault. Nonetheless, we do not think that this legislative history undermines our conclusion [that simple assault committed recklessly is not a crime of violence]. Instead, we think it likely that, when the drafters of § 16 mentioned simple assault as an exemplary crime of violence, they had in mind traditional common-law simple assault, defined as a crime “committed by either a willful attempt to inflict injury upon the person of another, or by a threat to inflict injury upon the person of another which, when coupled with an apparent present ability, causes a reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm.” The common law thus required ‘wilfull- ness,’ i.e., intent, in order to find a defendant guilty of simple assault. It is entirely plausible that this definition might have been Congress’s referent in discussing § 16(a). 9 The statute was nearly identical to the one at issue here. It provided, “A person is guilty of assault if he: (1) attempts to cause or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to another . . . .” 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 2701(a). FERNANDEZ-RUIZ v. GONZALES 17867 Popal, 416 F.3d at 254 n.5 (citations omitted). Finally, and perhaps most persuasively, the Third Circuit interpreted the reasoning of Leocal to reach crimes of recklessness in Oyebanji v. Gonzales, 418 F.3d 260 (3d Cir. 2005). Oyebanji involved a Nigerian citizen who faced removal for a New Jersey vehicular homicide conviction. Id. at 261-62. The statute of conviction required proof of recklessness—defined in part as “consciously disregard[ing] a substantial and unjustifiable risk that [a] material element [of an offense] exists or will result from [the actor’s] conduct.” Id. at 263 n.4 (quoting N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:2-2(3)). The court concluded that Leocal controlled primarily because of Leocal’s repeated emphasis that crimes of violence cannot be “accidental.” See id. at 263-64. The term “accidental,” the court explained, “is most often used to describe events that did not ‘occur [ ] as a result of anyone’s purposeful act.’ ” Id. at 264 (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 16 (8th ed. 2004)) (alteration in original). As such, even though New Jersey’s definition of recklessness involved conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk, the reckless use of force was not sufficiently “intentional” to prevent an offense from being accidental. See id. (“[W]e cannot overlook the Court’s repeated statement that ‘accidental’ conduct (which would seem to include reckless conduct) is not enough to qualify as a crime of violence.” (emphasis added)). As in Popal, the court in Oyebanji acknowledged that “reasonable arguments can be made in support of the proposition that” crimes of recklessness may be crimes of violence. Id. Nonetheless, the court interpreted Leocal to foreclose such arguments—at least at the circuit court level. See id. (“We recognize that there are plausible grounds for distinguishing Leocal and that reasonable arguments can be made in support of the proposition that Oyebanji’s offense of conviction should be viewed as a crime of violence. But as a lower fed17868 FERNANDEZ-RUIZ v. GONZALES eral court, we are advised to follow the Supreme Court’s ‘considered dicta.’ ”) (citation omitted).