Court Opinion

ID: 9490956
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:00:00.952572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:25.834211
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in Judge Merritt’s well-reasoned opinion to the effect that we must remand this case for retrial because the jury was not adequately instructed as to the requirements of the law under the circumstances of this case.
I would note that in this case, as Judge Merritt’s opinion states, “the beating had ceased” when Page coerced Ms. Scrivens into his car in Ohio for a trip to her mother’s home in Pennsylvania. I would emphasize that there was -no proof in this case that any physical assault or force was applied to Scri-vens’ body after Page and the victim left his apartment together in Ohio and he placed her in his car. The record reveals the following testimony of Scrivens:
Q. Am I correct that, from the minute, you left the apartment until the time that Derek left you at the hospital in Washington, Pennsylvania, that he did not strike you, hit you, do anything of that nature?
A. Right.
Q. So the injuries that you presented with at the hospital in Washington, Pennsylvania were injuries that you suffered inside that apartment; isn’t that true?
A. That’s true.
Q. Once you got to the hospital, am I ■ correct that you’re in a wheelchair, and somebody some man, white man, showed *489you down to the emergency room from where you were, where you first came in the hospital?
A. Derek pushed me. He was directing us to the emergency room, and he was pushing me in the wheelchair.
In light of this testimony, there is a serious question as to whether there was sufficient evidence to prove a “crime of violence ” occurred during or as a result of the car trip. Webster’s THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY (1966) offers one definition of “violence:” “exertion of any physical force so as to injure or abuse.” That same source gives a second definition: “intense, turbulent or furious action; force.” A proper interpretation would require a finding of physical force or intense physical action for conduct to constitute a “crime of violence.” The question then becomes whether Page committed some physical offense, some forceful action against Scrivens resulting in additional, separate bodily injury during, or as a result of, the forced crossing of a state line apart from the planned assault which was concluded at Page’s Ohio apartment.
The dissent’s detailed description of that assault concludes:
After the beating, Page carried his victim, who was too weak to walk and who had fallen into unconsciousness several times during the attack, and placed her into his car under threat of further violence from his gun. J.A at 326 (Scrivens Test at 428). Page then drove around for approximately four hours, crossing state lines into Pennsylvania and intentionally passing several local hospitals____
The jury did not find, however, that Page kidnapped the victim. In addition, there was no evidence that Page actually carried a stun gun on the trip into Pennsylvania, much less any evidence that he used it. There was evidence that Scrivens assumed that Page had a stun gun and that she considered the stun gun to be a threat to her safety. Scri-vens testified:
Well, before he took me to the car, he told me, once we get outside I’m not going to make a commotion, because he was patting on his pocket up here. That’s where he had that little stun gun at. He asked me would I, you know, whether or not I was going to make a commotion, and I told him no, and he carried to me to the car.
Scrivens was fearful of Page, understandably, during the trip and would have been afraid' of him whether or not he issued any threat to her or carried a stun gun. I do not believe, however, that mere oral threats, or even carrying a concealed stun gun without using it, or delaying medical treatment thereby “aggravating the preexisting wounds”— alone or in combination — suffices to constitute a crime of violence within the meaning of the statute.
I cannot agree with Judge Moore’s view that the initial beating in Ohio would constitute interstate domestic violence because it “enabled” him to force Scrivens to cross state lines later. Nor can I agree that forcing her “to travel interstate under threat of violence” and “preventing her from obtaining medical treatment, thereby causing aggravation of her preexisting injuries” necessarily constitutes interstate domestic violence or a crime of violence under the Act. All violent batterers may have a tendency to flee from the scene of their criminal violence and commission of state offenses, and may cross state lines to accomplish this. Congress has not yet made domestic violence in the home involving a female partner a federal offense, nor has it generally made assault and battery, a very prevalent crime, a federal offense. A logical interpretation of Congress’ language in § 2261(a)(2) is that it is directed towards one who coerces a partner to cross a state line and then during this travel or as a result of it intentionally commits a physically forceful act that causes bodily injury to the partner. Judge Moore’s reading would add a component — if there were a prior criminal violent act causing bodily injury to the partner prior to causing her to travel interstate— that prior act is part of the “course or result of’ the prohibited conduct under this section.
Traditionally, state law has always dealt with the conduct involved in this case. Indeed, such actions involving “domestic relations” has, before the enactment of the statute in question, been deemed to be a prerogative of the states, not the federal government. In this regard, I note the *490very recent case of Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic Inst and State University, 132 F.3d 949 (4th Cir.1997), which discusses the constitutionality of this Act. In Brzonkala, the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court and found that the Act passed constitutional muster, finding that “crimes of violence motivated by gender have a substantial adverse effect on interstate commerce.” Brzonkala, 132 F.3d at 966-67. In reaching that conclusion, the court relied in large part on legislative history. The dissent criticized the majority’s view:
Ignoring entirely the overarching change in Commerce Clause analysis wrought by Lopez [514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (1995) ], the majority merely recites several statements from House and Senate committees on the general problem of violence against women and the effect of that violence on the nation economy....
The majority’s wholesale deference to a committee finding would at least be understandable if that committee had made extensive findings deserving of deference. However, the majority ultimately sustains the constitutionality of the Act literally on the basis of a single sentence appearing in that committee report, which- sentence is, itself, entirely conclusory.
In short, the majority opinion reads, as intended, as if Lopez were never decided, holding for our Circuit, explicitly on the authority of Judge Kravitch’s opinion in United States v. Wright, 117 F.3d 1265, 1269 (11th Cir.1997), and implicitly on the reasoning advocated by the dissenting Justices in Lopez, that “ ‘Lopez did not alter our approach to determining whether a particular statute falls within the scope of Congress’s commerce Clause authority.’” Ante at 969. Indeed, as the majority tacitly acknowledges, with understandable reluctance, it views Lopez, the'most significant Commerce Clause decision in more than half a century, as- an aberration, a ease limited in its reach to section 922(q), of Title 18, of the United States Code. See ante at 969 & n. 13 (“[I]t is unsurprising that ‘courts have resisted urgings to extend Lopez beyond § 922(q).’” (citations omitted)).
Id. at 974-77 (Luttig, C.J., dissenting).
This judge believes that, for the reasons stated in the Brzonkala dissent, the constitutionality of VAWA is subject to serious question. Page, however, presents no constitutional argument in his brief, and therefore we do not address the issue.
Despite my reservations about the sufficiency of evidence where a perceived threat of violence is alleged to constitute a “crime of violence,” I concur that the jury was not properly instructed about the scope of the alleged offense and that the case should be REVERSED and REMANDED, eliminating the “single episode” theory of prosecution.