Court Opinion

ID: 9488833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:56:46.075881+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:07.747592
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
One of the cardinal principles that guides my appellate review of criminal cases is to insure that outrage at the egregiousness of the complained of conduct has not intruded upon the application of neutral principles of law. Thus, in this case, the offensive and degrading conduct of Appellant Lanier prompted me to undertake a searching review of the record and legal precedents related to enforcement of various civil rights statutes. I candidly admit that my first reading of the majority opinion impressed me so greatly that I was forced to reexamine my initial decision to uphold the conviction.
A meticulous review of the record now assures me that the conviction in this case did not result in a criminalization of conduct based upon its outrageousness rather than its unconstitutionally. So assured, I dissent.
I can readily understand the result reached by the majority, given the premise from which it begins its analysis. However, my view of constitutional rights and of the evolvement principles, carries me to another analytical starting point. My belief is now clear that Lanier’s actions against his victims transgressed their liberty interest enshrined in the constitution.
*1401For me to agree with the majority would require that I hold, even at this late date in our civil rights and human rights development, that section 242 should be limited to deprivation of the discrete categories of property, contract, and equal protection. The narrow reading applied by the majority would abandon the Supreme Court’s opinion in Screws v. United States, which upholds section 242 as it applies to willful violations of any constitutional right that has been made specific. 325 U.S. 91, 104, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1036-37, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945). Section 242 has proven to be a valuable tool in prosecuting willful violators of a number a constitutional rights. To list only a few, section 242 convictions have resulted from: violations of the Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, United States v. Tines, et al., 70 F.3d 891 (6th Cir.1995); United States v. Georvassilis, 498 F.2d 883 (6th Cir.1974); the Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force during detention, United States v. Reese et al., 2 F.3d 870 (9th Cir.1993); the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process right to a trial before conviction, United States v. Cobb, et al., 905 F.2d 784 (4th Cir.1990). I note particularly that section 242 prosecutions have been brought for violations of Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights. In United States v. O’Dell et al., 462 F.2d 224 (6th Cir.1972), this court affirmed a section 242 conviction for a violation of a pretrial detainee’s substantive due process right to be free from excessive force amounting to punishment. I see no barrier to applying section 242 to violations of substantive due process rights just as it is applied to violations of other constitutional rights. The only hurdle is demonstrating that the right has been made specific by decisions of the courts of the United States.
Like Judge Daughtrey, I believe that court decisions have made specific the right to be free from invasions of bodily integrity that shock the conscience. In my dissent from the majority opinion in Wilson v. Beebe, I acknowledged a protected liberty interest in personal dignity and bodily integrity. 770 F.2d 578, 594 (6th Cir.1985) (Jones, J. dissenting). The complainant in Wilson sustained critical injuries after being shot by a police officer who attempted to handcuff him while holding his cocked service revolver in one of his hands. Id. As Judge Daughtrey has in this case, in Wilson, I drew from the Supreme Court’s decision in Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 672, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1413, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977), as the source of the liberty interest. I concur in Judge Daughtrey’s discussion of the development and establishment of the right to bodily integrity and accordingly see no need to repeat the discussion in this separate opinion.
Moreover, I am not disturbed that the Supreme Court has not held specifically that sexual assault violates the right to bodily integrity. This reflects only the reality that a number of ways exist to deprive one of a right. Surely the majority would not suggest that a deprivation of property or contract would be any less a deprivation because it was accomplished by a means not previously addressed by the Supreme Court. If a right to bodily integrity includes freedom from corporal punishment, freedom to make reproductive decisions and freedom from unwanted medical intrusions, it must include protections from forced sexual advances. Further, as Judge Daughtrey points out, violations of bodily integrity by sexual assault have previously been the bases for convictions under section 242.
I must also dissent from the majority’s rejection of the right to bodily integrity as grounds for a section 242 conviction because its bounds have been established in civil rather than criminal cases. Once established, a constitutional right is absolute. Of course, the degree of infringement necessary to support a suit may differ depending upon whether the suit is civil or criminal. I cannot, however, endorse a policy of denying the basic existence of a right in a criminal case because the courts have developed the right in civil rather than criminal cases. As stated by the Ninth Circuit:
There is nothing wrong with looking to a civil case brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for guidance as to the nature of the constitutional right whose alleged violation has been made the basis of a section 242 charge. The protections of the Constitution do not change according to the proce*1402dural context in which they are enforced— whether the allegation that constitutional rights have been transgressed is raised in a civil action or in a criminal prosecution, they are the same constitutional rights.
United States v. Reese, 2 F.3d 870, 884 (9th Cir.1993), cert. denied — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 928, 127 L.Ed.2d 220 (1994). Likewise, in United States v. Bigham, the Fifth Circuit stated:
Whether a case is brought on the civil or criminal side of the docket, the actionable conduct is deprivation of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The culpable intent will vary from willfulness of a criminal charge to something less in a civil complaint, and it may vary according to the particular constitutional right infringed. Otherwise, between the criminal and civil statutes the courts recognize the intent of Congress to cover the same eases, though providing different remedies.
812 F.2d 943, 948 (5th Cir.1987) (citations omitted). Once a right has been made a definite and specific part of the body of Fourteenth Amendment due process rights, a willful violation of that right comes within the purview of section 242. United States v. Stokes, 506 F.2d 771, 776 (5th Cir.1975) (relying on both criminal and civil cases to hold the right to be free from injury while in police custody had been made specific). Even though the parameters of the right to bodily integrity have been forged primarily in civil cases, the right has been made specific nonetheless. Therefore, there should be no question that the violation of the right may serve as the basis of a prosecution under section 242.
I share the majority’s view that the monstrous nature of a defendant’s actions must not lead the courts to expand federal criminal statutes beyond their intended reach. Principles of strict construction require this court not to do so. The Supreme Court, however, has approved, in this unique instance, a criminal statute that changes with the changing nature of due process rights. The Supreme Court recognized in Screws that not every law enforcement officer would be aware of the full range of rights that might be constitutional. For that reason, the Supreme Court limited the application to section 242 to rights made specific. Screws, 325 U.S. at 104, 65 S.Ct. at 1036-37. A criminal conviction based on a right not fully defined and developed by the courts would violate principles of notice and strict construction. Nevertheless, when the courts fully define the parameters of the right, notice has been given that violation of such a right may result in a criminal conviction.
Some of my colleagues apparently and understandably fear that a criminal statute cannot cross reference a series of rights that may be ever changing. However, the nature of the substantive due process right is to change to protect that values of our times. Without elastic principles of due process, many of our greatest civil rights challenges could not have been overcome. Although appealing on one level, I have concluded that worries that 242 will provide an impermissi-bly flexible body of criminal law are not well founded. The Supreme Court built safeguards into the statute by requiring the specific establishment of rights and by requiring willful violations. Without the establishment of a right by the courts, there is no danger that runaway or other opportunistic prosecutors will break open the bounds of the statute with crimes that were never meant to be encompassed by its reach. Courts are entrusted with the duty to decide when a right is constitutional. Only after this decision has been made are prosecutors afforded the opportunity to bring indictments.1
*1403Again, I note my agreement with the principles behind the majority’s push to limit the application of section 242. Without legislative action, the criminal law generally cannot be freely expanded to meet the outrage of an angry community. Such elasticity in the law would make potential defendants of those whose actions disturb a particular prosecutor or community but not the populace at large. Minorities, who have traditionally suffered the most injustice at the hands of our criminal law, would be especially vulnerable to a criminal law that makes unpopular actions criminal without endorsement of the legislature and without notice to the potential violator. I am comfortable with the elasticity of section 242 only because its growth is checked by its link to our Constitution. I am secure in my knowledge the link between the statute and the Constitution will prevent section 242 from being used as a tool to prosecute those whose actions are merely unpopular in a particular community. The disgusting and reprehensible conduct of Appellant Lanier sinks far below any characterization of merely unpopular or unacceptable. Lanier’s conduct clearly violated constitutional rights and falls squarely within the range of conduct Congress intended to punish with section 242.
I join in Judge Daughtrey’s opinion to the extent it is consistent with my views stated here, and I respectfully DISSENT.

. In its footnote 9, the majority expresses its belief that the dissenters somehow have not contemplated the effect that holding violations of bodily integrity are within the reach of section 242. By listing the number of potential violators, the majority seems to reason that because a wide range of government employees may regularly violate citizens' bodily integrity, section 242 cannot be used to criminalize such violations. The majority’s statement lacks the support of logic. The number of violators should not determine whether an action is criminal. It is unlikely that the majority would decline to affirm section 242 violations of Fourth or Eighth Amendment rights merely because many police officers around the country beat and abuse inmates on a regular basis. If the number of conscience shocking violations occurring regu*1403larly is near to what the majority suggests, criminal prosecution is perhaps even more important. Furthermore, criminal prosecution of some of these allegedly rampant violations may serve as a deterrent to prevent continued encroachments on individuals' bodily integrity.