Court Opinion

ID: 9426038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:33.598122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.797206
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins,
dissenting.
Does an assault on a federal officer violate 18 U. S. C. § 1111 even when the assailant is unaware, and has no reason to know, that the victim is other than a private citizen or, indeed, a confederate in crime? This important question, never decided by the Court, is squarely presented in a petition for certiorari that has been pending here for many months: No. 73-6868, Fernandez v. *697United States.2 But this question was not contained in the petition for certiorari in the present case, and has not been addressed in either the briefs or oral arguments. The parties have merely assumed the answer to the question, and directed their attention to the separate question whether scienter is an element of conspiring to violate § 111. Nevertheless the Court sets out sua sponte to decide the basic question presented in Fernandez without the benefit of either briefing or oral argument by counsel.
This conspicuous disregard of the most basic principle of our adversary system of justice seems to me indefensible. Clearly, the petition for certiorari in Fernandez should have been granted, and that case decided after briefing and oral argument on its merits, before the subsidiary issue in the present case was considered. It is not too late to correct the serious judicial mistake the Court has made. We should grant certiorari in Fernandez now, and set the present case for rehearing after the argument in Fernandez has been had. But the Court rejects that course, and I perforce address the fundamental Fernandez question.
The Court recognizes that “[t]he question ... is not whether the [‘federal officer’] requirement is jurisdictional, but whether it is jurisdictional only.” Ante, at 677 n. 9. Put otherwise, the question is whether Congress intended to write an aggravated-assault statute, analogous to the many state statutes which protect the persons and functions of state officers against assault, or whether Congress intended merely to federalize every assault which happens to have a federal officer as its victim. The Court chooses the latter interpretation, reading *698the federal-officer requirement to be jurisdictional only. This conclusion is inconsistent with the pertinent legislative history, the verbal structure of § 111, accepted canons of statutory construction, and the dictates of common sense.
Many States provide an aggravated penalty for assaults upon state law enforcement officers; typically the victim-status element transforms the assault from a misdemeanor to a felony.3 These statutes have a twofold purpose: to reflect the societal gravity associated with assaulting a public officer and, by providing an enhanced deterrent against such assault, to accord to public officers and their functions a protection greater than that which the law of assault otherwise provides to private citizens and their private activities.4 Consonant with these purposes, the accused's knowledge that his victim had an official status or function is invariably recognized by the States as an essential element of the aggravated offense.5 Where an assailant had no such knowledge, he could not of course be deterred by the statutory threat of enhanced punishment, and it makes no sense to regard the unknowing assault as being any more reprehensible, in a moral *699or retributive sense, than if the victim had been, as the assailant supposed, a private citizen.
The state statutes protect only state officers. I would read § 111 as filling the gap and supplying analogous protection for federal officers and their functions. An aggravated penalty should apply only where an assailant knew, or had reason to know, that his victim had some official status or function. It is immaterial whether the assailant knew the victim was employed by the federal, as opposed to a state or local, government. That is a matter of “jurisdiction only,” for it does not affect the moral gravity of the act. If the victim was a federal officer, § 111 applies; if he was a state o.r local officer, an analogous state statute or local ordinance will generally apply. But where the assailant reasonably thought his victim a common citizen or, indeed, a confederate in crime, aggravation is simply out of place, and the case should be tried in the appropriate forum under the general law of assault, as are unknowing assaults on state officers.
The history of § 111 permits no doubt that this is an aggravated assault statute, requiring proof of scienter. The provision derives from a 1934 statute, 18 U. S. C. § 254 (1940 ed.), set out in the margin.6 The Attorney General proposed the statute in a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary; the Attorney General’s reasons are the only ones on record for the pro*700vision.7 The federal officers covered were listed in a companion provision, simultaneously enacted, proscribing the killing of federal officers.8 The present § 111 emerged *701from the 1948 recodification of Title 18,9 “with changes in phraseology and substance necessary to effect the consolidation’' of the former § 254 with a minor 1909 statute proscribing assaults on officers of the “Bureau of Animal Industry of the Department of Agriculture.”10 As the Court has recognized, the purport of the present § 111 must be derived from its major source, the 1934 enactment. See Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, 176 n. 4.
Rummaging through the spare legislative history of the 1934 law, the Court manages to persuade itself that *702Congress intended to reach unknowing assaults on federal officers. Ante, at 679-684. But if that was the congressional intention, which I seriously doubt, it found no expression in the legislative product. The fact is that the 1934 statute expressly required scienter for an assault conviction. An assault on a federal officer was proscribed only if perpetrated “on account of the performance of his official duties.” See n. 6, supra. That is, it was necessary not only that the assailant have notice that his victim possessed official status or duties but also that the assailant's motive be retaliation against the exercise of those duties.
It was not until the 1948 recodification that the proscription was expanded to cover assaults on federal officers “while engaged in,” as well as “on account of,” the performance of official duties. This was, as the Reviser observed, a technical alteration; it produced no instructive legislative history. See n. 10, supra. As presently written, the statute does clearly reach knowing assaults regardless of motive. But to suggest that it also reaches wholly unknowing assaults is to convert the 1948 alteration into one of major substantive importance, which it concededly was not.
The Court has also managed to convince itself that § 254 was not an aggravated assault statute. The surest evidence that § 254 was an aggravated assault statute may be found in its penalty provision.11 A single unarmed assault was made, and remains, punishable by a sentence of three years' imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. One need not make an exhaustive survey of state law to appreciate that this is a harsher penalty than is typically imposed for an unarmed assault on a private citizen. In *7031934, federal law already defined and proscribed all varieties of assault occurring within the admiralty, maritime, and territorial jurisdiction of the United States: The penalty structure extended in graded steps, turning on the intent and methods of the assailant, from three months’ to 20 years’ imprisonment.12 If Congress had intended the victim-status element in § 254 to be “jurisdictional only” — to provide merely another jurisdictional basis for trying assaults in the federal courts — there would have been no need to append a new and unique penalty provision to § 254. Instead, Congress could simply have made cross-reference to the pre-existing penalty structure for assaults within federal jurisdiction. This is not idle speculation. It was precisely the solution adopted, in the same 1934 -4ci, for the new offense of killing a federal officer: Congress provided that that new offense be defined and punished according to the pre-existing, graded, penalty structure for homicides within the maritime, admiralty, and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.13
This deliberated difference in definition and penalty treatment between the homicide and the assault statutes has an obvious significance. Congress gave to the new assault statute a unique and substantively novel definition and penalty. Unless we wish to assume that Congress was scatterbrained, we must conclude that it regarded the victim-status element as of substantive— and not merely jurisdictional — importance. That ele*704ment was seen as an aggravating circumstance, just as is true in the state statutes, and not merely as a factor giving federal prosecutors and judges jurisdiction to deal with the offense.
The Court reasons otherwise. Positing that the victim-status element in the homicide statute is jurisdictional only, the Court concludes that the same must be true of the assault statute. Ante, at 683-684. Even assuming the premise, the conclusion does not follow. Quite apart from the radically different ways in which the two statutes provide for offense-definition and penalties, it requires little imagination to appreciate how Congress could regard the victim-status element as “jurisdictional only” in the homicide case but substantively significant in the assault case. The Court itself supplies a possible reason:
“[The homicide statute] was not needed to fill a gap in existing substantive state law. The States proscribed murder, and, until recently, with the enactment of certain statutes in response to the successful attack on capital punishment, murder of a peace officer has not been deemed an aggravated form of murder, for all States usually have punished murderers with the most severe sanction the law allows.” Ante, at 683.
In other words, the Court suggests that the widely perceived distinction, in morality and social policy, between assaults, depending upon the assailant’s knowledge of the identity of the victim, found little or no echo in the law of homicide. From this, the natural conclusion— fortified by the penalty provisions — would be that Congress discriminated between the two statutes, recognizing the substantive distinction in the one and not in the other. For reasons I cannot fathom, the Court instead assumes that Congress was unable to discriminate in this *705fashion- — -that what had been self-evident to state legislatures was beyond the capacity of the National Legislature to comprehend. The Court says it cannot believe “Congress silently chose to treat assaults and homicides differently .... [W]e have before us one bill with a single legislative history, and we decline to bifurcate our interpretation.” Ante, at 685 n. 18. But it was Congress itself that “bifurcated” the 1934 statute — by treating homicides and assaults differently as regards penalty and offense definition, and by proscribing only those assaults that were “on account of the performance of official duties.” ■ What the Court “declines” to do is to read the statute that Congress wrote.
While the legislative history of the 1934 law is “scant,” Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S., at 174, it is sufficient to locate a congressional purpose consistent only with implication of a scienter requirement. As the Court said in Ladner: “[T]he congressional aim was to prevent hindrance to the execution of official duty, and thus to assure the carrying out of federal purposes and interests, and was not to protect federal officers except as incident to that aim.” Id., at 175-176. This purpose is, of course, exactly analogous to the purposes supporting the state statutes which provide enhanced punishment for assault on state officers. A statute proscribing interference with official duty does not “prevent hindrance” with that duty where the assailant thinks his victim is a mere private citizen, or indeed, a confederate in his criminal activity.
To avoid this self-evident proposition, the Court effectively overrules Ladner and concludes that the assault statute aims as much at protecting individual officers as it does at protecting the functions they execute. Ante, at 677-682. If the Ladner Court had shared this opinion, it would not have held, as it did, that a single shotgun *706blast wounding two federal agents was to be considered a single assault. But in any event, even today's revisionist treatment of Ladner does not succeed in getting the Court where it wants to go. So far as the scienter requirement is concerned, it makes no difference whether the statute aims to protect individuals, or functions, or both. The Court appears to think that extending § 111 to unknowing assaults will deter such assaults — will “give . . . protection ... to the agent acting under cover.” Ante, at 684. This, of course, is nonsense. The federal statute “protects” an officer from assault only when the assailant knows that the victim is an officer. Absent such knowledge, the only “protection” is that provided by the general law of assault, for that is the only law which the potential assailant reasonably, if erroneously, believes applicable in the circumstances.
The Court also suggests that implication of a scienter requirement “would give insufficient protection to the agent enforcing an unpopular law.” This is to repeat the same error. Whatever the “popularity” of the laws he is executing, and whatever the construction placed on § 111, a federal officer is “protected” from assault by that statute only where the assailant has some indication from the circumstances that his victim is other than a private citizen. Assuming, arguendo, that Congress thought that local prosecutors and judges were insufficiently enthusiastic about trying cases involving assaults on federal officers, it remains the fact that a federal statute proscribing knowing assaults meets this concern in every case where local attitudes might conceivably embolden the populace to interfere with federal officers enforcing an “unpopular” law.
The fact is that there is absolutely no indication that before 1934 local prosecutors and judges were lax in trying cases involving assaults on federal officers, that Con*707gress thought so, or — and this is the major point — that Congress was so obsessed by the esoteric “problem” of unknowing assaults on officers who, if known, would be unpopular, as to enact a statute severely aggravated in penalty but blind to the commonsense distinction between knowing and unknowing assaults. The list of covered officers was long and varied in 1934; it has since become even more so.14 I can perceive no design to single out officers charged with the execution of “unpopular” laws or given to using undercover techniques. The Attorney General’s letter15 in support of the 1934 enactment disavowed any criticism of the integrity or good faith of local law enforcement authorities. He was at pains to stress that the “Federal Government should not be compelled to rely upon the courts of the States, however respectable and well disposed . . . .” His particular concern was that “ [i] n these cases resort must usually be had to the local police court, which affords but little relief to us, under the circumstances, in our effort to further the legitimate purposes of the Federal Government.” This is most reasonably read as a reference to the fact that, absent some statute aggravating the offense, assault was and is merely a misdemeanor — a “police court” offense — in many States. To deal with this problem, the Attorney General sought enactment of a federal aggravated assault statute, Congress obliged, and this Court should give the statute its natural interpretation.
Turning from the history of the statute to its structure, the propriety of implying a scienter requirement becomes manifest. The statute proscribes not only assault but also a whole series of related acts. It applies to any person who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with [a federal officer] . . . *708while engaged in or on account of the performance of his official duties.” (Emphasis added.) It can hardly be denied that the emphasized words imply a scienter requirement. Generally speaking, these acts are legal and moral wrongs only if the actor knows that his “victim” enjoys a moral or legal privilege to detain him or order him about. These are terms of art, arising out of the common and statutory law proscribing obstruction of justice.16 Indeed, in urging enactment of § 254, the Attorney General referred to obstruction statutes, having either express or implied scienter requirements, as an instructive analogue.17 Whether it be express or implied, scienter has always been regarded in this country as an essential element of obstruction of justice. Pettibone v. United States, 148 U. S. 197, 204-207. The sole innovation in § 111 is its protection of executive officers and functions, rather than judicial officers and functions. Obviously this distinction should have no effect on the scienter requirement.
If the words grouped in the statute with “assaults” require scienter, it follows that scienter is also required for an assault conviction. One need hardly rely on such Latin phrases as ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis to reach this obvious conclusion. The Court suggests that assault may be treated differently, “with no risk of unfairness,” because an assailant — unlike one who merely “opposes” or “resists” — “knows from the very outset that his planned course of conduct is wrongful” even *709though he “may be surprised to find that his intended victim is a federal officer in civilian apparel.” Ante, at 685. This argument will not do, either as a matter of statutory construction or as a matter of elementary justice.
The Court is saying that because all assaults are wrong, it is “fair” to regard them all as equally wrong. This is a strange theory of justice. As the States recognize, an unknowing assault on an officer is less reprehensible than a knowing assault; to provide that the former may be punished as harshly as the latter is to create a very real “risk of unfairness.” It is not unprecedented for Congress to enact stringent legislation, but today it is the Court that rewrites a statute so as to create an inequity which Congress itself had no intention of inflicting.
To treat assaults differently from the other acts associated with it in the statute is a pure exercise in judicial legislation. In Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S., at 176, the Court noted that the “Government frankly conceded on the oral argument that assault can be treated no differently from the other outlawed activities.” The Court characterized this concession as “necessary in view of the lack of any indication that assault was to be treated differently, and in light of 18 U. S. C. § 111, the present recodification of § 254, which lumps assault in with the rest of the offensive actions,” id., at 176 n. 4. This analysis was not mere dictum but strictly necessary to the result reached in Ladner. No contrary analysis can be squared with the statutory history.18
*710The implication of scienter here is as necessary and proper as it was in Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246. The Court there read a scienter requirement into a federal larceny statute over the Government's objection that the need for scienter should not be implied for a federal offense when the statute that created the offense was silent on the subject. The Court said:
“Congressional silence as to mental elements in an Act merely adopting into federal statutory law a concept of crime already so well defined in common law and statutory interpretation by the states may warrant quite contrary inferences than the same silence in creating an offense new to general law, for whose definition the courts have no guidance except the Act. . . .
“. . . [WJhere Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed.” Id., at 262-263.
The same principle applies here. The terms and purposes of § 111 flow from well-defined and familiar law proscribing obstructions of justice, and the provision com*711plements a pattern of state aggravated assault statutes which are uniform and unambiguous in requiring scienter.
We see today the unfortunate consequences of deciding an important question without the benefit of the adversary process.19 In this rush to judgment, settled prece*712dents, such as Ladner v. United States, supra, and Pettibone v. United States, supra, are subverted. Legislative history is ignored or imaginatively reconstructed. Statutory terms are broken from their context and given unnatural readings. On top of it all, the Court disregards two firmly established canons of - statutory construction— “two wise principles this Court has long followed”:
“First, as we have recently reaffirmed, ‘ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity.’ Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971). See also Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, 177 (1958); Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81 (1955); United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 346 U. S. 441 (1953) (plurality opinion for affirmance)....
“. . . [S]econd . . . : unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the federal-state balance. Congress has traditionally been reluctant to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States. ... In traditionally sensitive areas, such as legislation affecting the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision.” United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 347.
If the Congress desires to sweep all assaults upon federal employees into the federal courts, a suitable statute could be easily enacted. I should hope that in so doing *713the Congress, like every State which has dealt with the matter, would make a distinction in penalty between an assailant who knows the official identity of the victim and one who does not. That result would have a double advantage over the result reached by the Court today. It would be a fair law, and it would be the product of the lawmaking branch of our Government.
For the reasons stated, T believe that before there can be a violation of 18 U. S. C. § 111, an assailant must know or have reason to know that the person he assaults is an officer. It follows a fortiori that there can be no criminal conspiracy to violate the statute in the absence of at least equivalent knowledge. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the opinion and judgment of the Court.

 The petition seeks review of a judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, affirming a substantive conviction under 18 U. S. C. § 111. United States v. Fernandez, 497 F. 2d 730.

 See, e. g., Cal. Penal Code §§ 241, 243, 245 (b) (Supp. 1975) ; D. C. Code Ann. §22-505 (1973); Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 38, §12-2 (a) (6) (1973); Mich. Comp. Laws §750.479 (1970); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 557.215 (1969); N. J. Stat. Ann. § 2A:99-1 (1969); R. I. Gen. Laws Ann. § 11-5-5 (Supp. 1974); Tex. Penal Code §§ 22.02 (a) (2) & (b) (1974); Wis. Stat. Ann. § 940.205 (Supp. 1974-1975); Model Penal Code § 242.1 (Proposed Official Draft 1962).

 See, e. g., People v. Baca, 247 Cal. App. 2d 487, 55 Cal. Rptr. 681; Celmer v. Quarberg, 56 Wis. 2d 581, 203 N. W. 2d 45.

 See, e. g., People v. Glover, 257 Cal. App 2d 502, 65 Cal. Rptr. 219; People v. Litch, 4 Ill. App. 3d 788, 281 N. E. 2d 745; State v. Lewis, 184 Neb. Ill, 165 N. W. 2d 569; Ford v. State, 158 Tex. Cr. 26, 252 S. W. 2d 948; Celmer v. Quarberg, supra; Model Penal Code § 242.1 (Proposed Official Draft 1962).

 “Whoever shall forcibly resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with any person designated in section 253 of this title while engaged in the performance of his official duties, or shall assault him on account of the performance of his official duties, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and whoever, in the commission of any of the acts described in this section, shall use a deadly or dangerous weapon shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” Act of May 18, 1934, c. 299, § 2, 48 Stat. 781.

 The letter is reprinted by the Court, ante, at 680-681, n. 16.

 Act of May 18, 1934, c. 299, § 1, 48 Stat. 780, as amended, 18 U. S. C. § 1114. The original provision read:
“Whoever shall kill, as defined in sections 452 and 453 of this title, any United States marshal or deputy United States marshal or person employed to assist a United States marshal or deputy United States marshal, any officer or employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, post-office inspector, Secret Service operative, any officer or enlisted man of the Coast Guard, any employee of any United States penal or correctional institution, any officer, employee, agent, or other person in the service of the customs or of the internal revenue, any immigrant inspector or any immigration patrol inspector, any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture or of the Department of the Interior designated by the Secretary of Agriculture or the Secretary of the Interior to enforce any Act of Congress for the protection, preservation, or restoration of game and other wild birds and animals, any officer or employee of the National Park Service, any officer or employee of, or assigned to duty in, the field service of the Division of Grazing of the Department of the Interior, or any officer or employee of the Indian field service of the United States, while engaged in the performance of his official duties, or on account of the performance of his official duties, shall be punished as provided under section 454 of this title.” 18 U. S. C. § 253 (1940 ed.).
The list of officers has expanded. It now includes, in 18 U. S. C. §1114:
“any judge of the United States, any United States Attorney, any Assistant United States Attorney, or any United States marshal or deputy marshal or person employed to assist such marshal or deputy marshal, any officer or employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, any officer or employee of the Postal Service, any officer or employee of the secret service or of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, any officer or enlisted man of the Coast Guard, any officer or employee of any United States penal or correctional institution, any officer, employee or agent of the customs or of the internal revenue or any person assisting him in the execution of his duties, any immigration officer, any *701officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture or of the Department of the Interior designated by the Secretary of Agriculture or the Secretary of the Interior to enforce any Act of Congress for the protection, preservation, or restoration of game and other wild birds and animals, any employee of the Department of Agriculture designated by the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out any law or regulation, or to perform any function in connection with any Federal or State program or any program of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands of the United States, or the District of Columbia, for the control or eradication or prevention of the introduction or dissemination of animal diseases, any officer or employee of the National Park Service, any officer or employee of, or assigned to duty, in the field service of the Bureau of Land Management, any employee of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Department of Agriculture, or any officer or employee of the Indian field service of the United States, or any officer or employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration directed to guard and protect property of the United States under the administration and control of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, any security officer of the Department of State or the Foreign Service, or any officer or employee of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare or of the Department of Labor assigned to perform investigative, inspection, or law enforcement functions.”

 Act of June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 688.

 See the Reviser’s Note, H. R. Rep. No. 304, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., A12 (1947). The minor provision consolidated with §254 was 18 U. S. C. § 118 (1940 ed.), derived from the Act of Mar. 4, 1909, § 62, 35 Stat. 1100.

 The Reviser’s Note, supra, n. 10, observed that the new § 111 adopted the penalty provision of § 254 “as the latest expression of Congressional intent.”

 18 U. S. C. §455 (1926 ed.), derived from the Act of Mar. 4, 1909, § 276, 35 Stat. 1143.

 See n. 8, supra. The definitions of, and penalties for, homicides within federal jurisdiction were set forth in 18 U. S. C. §§ 452-454 (1926 ed.), derived from the Act of Mar. 4, 1909, §273, 35 Stat. 1143. This was the same Act which established the definitions of, and graded penalties for, assaults within federal jurisdiction. See n. 11, supra.

 See n. 8, supra.

 See n. 7, supra.

 Comparable language is used in the other federal obstruction-of-justice statutes, e. g., 18 U. S. C. §§ 1501-1505, 1507, 1509, 1752, 2231.

 Title 18 U. S. C. §245 (1926 ed.), mentioned in the Attorney General's letter, supra, n. 7, had an express scienter requirement. Title 18 U. S. C. § 121 (1926 ed.), also mentioned, had long been judicially construed to require scienter. E. g., Gay v. United States, 12 F. 2d 433, 434-435.

 As noted earlier, the 1934 version of the statute, proscribed assault on a federal officer only when perpetrated “on account of the performance of his official duties.” (Emphasis added.) See n. 6, supra. By contrast, the other acts in 18 U. S. C. §254 (1940 ed.), were proscribed so long as the officer was “engaged in the performance of his official duties.” The mental element for assault was more, not less, stringent than for the other acts. In the 1948 re-*710codifieation, this asymmetry was eliminated, to allow consolidation of the 1934 statute with a minor provision enacted in 1909. Now each of the acts is proscribed if committed upon an officer engaged in performance of his duties or if committed “on account” of his performance of duty. It would be utterly farfetched to suggest that this technical alteration, aiming toward symmetry, was intended to create a difference concerning the scienter requirement as between assaults and the other acts listed with it in § 111.

 The Court seems to be emboldened by the rough consensus among the Courts of Appeals that the victim-status elements in § 111 is jurisdictional only. Ante, at 677 n. 12. But this consensus is both very recent and very shaky. The federal courts continue to complain that the “substantial number of prosecutions under this statute” has resulted in “disagreement in the cases” regarding the scienter question. United States v. Perkins, 488 F. 2d 652, 654; see also United States v. Chunn, 347 F. 2d 717, 721. The fact is that until 1964, the federal courts were virtually unanimous the other way — that is, in holding or assuming that proof of scienter was required for the offense of obstructing or assaulting a federal officer. E. g., Hall v. United States, 235 F. 2d 248; Carter v. United States, 231 F. 2d 232, cert. denied, 351 U. S. 984; Owens v. United States, 201 F. 2d 749; Hargett v. United States, 183 F. 2d 859; Sparks v. United States, 90 F. 2d 61; United States v. Bell, 219 F. Supp. 260; United States v. Page, 277 F. 459; United States v. Taylor, 57 F. 391; United States v. Miller, 17 F. R. D. 486. The turning point was United States v. Lombardozzi, 335 F. 2d 414, cert. denied, 379 U. S. 914, which eliminated the scienter requirement on the historically erroneous ground that Congress had enacted the provision merely to transfer to the federal courts a class of assault cases out from under the untrustworthy state courts and prosecutors’ offices. Lombardozzi was promptly followed, with little or no fresh analysis, in nearly every Circuit. Just as promptly, however, second thoughts have emerged. The Ninth Circuit has recently acknowledged that Lombardozzi was unsoundly premised. United States v. Fernandez, 497 F. 2d, at 736-739. In her concurring opinion in Fernandez, Judge Hufstedler strongly argued the desirability of re-examining the entire question, id., at 740-747. A number of Courts of Appeals have felt constrained to limit Lom-bardozzi by making distinctions between the scienter requirement for assault and for the other acts proscribed by § 111, distinctions directly at odds with the history of the provisions and with Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, 176. See, e. g., United States v. Perkins, supra, at 654-655; United States v. Ulan, 421 F. 2d *712787, 789-790; United States v. Goodwin, 440 F. 2d 1152, 1156; United States v. Young, 464 F. 2d 160, 163. Having acted hastily, the Courts of Appeals are only now appreciating the need for reconsideration. Acting with even greater haste, the Court today bids fair to insure that the issue will be forever sealed.