Court Opinion

ID: 9491865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:25:47.551859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:58.954110
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This is a difficult case of first impression for our court. Essentially, Judge Moore applies the Violence Against Women Act to cover the situation where defendant assaulted and impaired seriously a female partner before any interstate transportation occurred. I cannot agree that vague threats, unaccompanied by any physical violence during the course of the interstate travel, is *339sufficient for conviction under the charge if the threats and travel “kept Scrivens from receiving medical aid sooner.” Defendant did, after he committed his reprehensible attack in Ohio, transport Scrivens across a state line and finally delivered her to a hospital for treatment. He displayed no weapon and laid no hand upon her during the trip. Furthermore, I do not agree that aggravation by failure to treat can constitute “bodily injury” within the meaning of the statute.
Nor can I agree that one acquitted of kidnapping may yet be deemed guilty of that offense under Ohio law dealing with the meaning of assault, or under § 2261(a)(2). Whatever else the meaning and effect of Page’s kidnapping acquittal, it does not permit the court to treat kidnapping as being an “underlying crime of violence for the § 2261(a)(2) conviction.” I do not believe United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 67-69, 105 S.Ct. 471, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984), which stands for the proposition that we do not vacate convictions merely because verdicts cannot be reasonably reconciled, supports the Judge Moore’s rationale in this case.
To the contrary, I believe that the language in S.Rep. No. 103-138 at 61 that the statute in question “covers cases where the defendant has forced a spouse or intimate partner to cross State lines, and injury or abuse occurs during the course of or as a result of this travel” is the proper interpretation of this ambiguous statute. Section 2261(2) refers to “causing the crossing of a state line,” or travelling in interstate commerce; it is not clear to me that the “in the course of or as a result of such conduct” language refers to such travel or to violent conduct or force causing such travel, or whether force, coercion and assault that occurred before the interstate travel is covered at all.
This case was neither argued by the government nor submitted to the jury on instructions that the jury might determine that further bodily injuries, if any, suffered by Scrivens while in the course of interstate travel after the initial Ohio assault, were sufficient to support guilt.
There was no proof in this case that any physical assault or force was applied to Scri-vens’ body after she and Page left the Ohio apartment together. The record reveals the following testimony of Scrivens:
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 you 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 short, I cannot agree that the initial beating in Ohio may constitute interstate domestic violence, because such violent conduct enabled Page to force Scrivens, at a much later time, to cross state lines without using any further physical force to inflict further bodily injury. I do not believe that by enacting the language in question, Congress intended to criminalize some indirect connection between interstate travel and violent acts occurring before such travel bringing about domestic bodily injury. This is not construing the statute to require an act of violence “occurring at the moment a state line is crossed.” Judge Moore cites S.Rep. No. 103-138 at 61 (1993) as indicating an intent to provide a federal remedy for “interstate crimes of abuse including crimes committed against spouses or intimate partners during interstate travel.” My point in this case is that the violent acts and beating of the intimate partner did not occur “during interstate travel.” The jury instructions did not make it clear exactly what had to be proven, particularly where the jury did not *340conclude that kidnapping had occurred, involving a forceful taking across state linesj1]
In addition, I share some skepticism about this statute which purportedly is based upon concern about gender violence. What if the victim in this ease were Page’s former wife with whom he had no relationship at the time of the offense? What if it had been another female relative, neither his wife nor intimate partner? Prosecution of such an offense against any female by Page would have been handled by the states as it has been handled in eases of assault and battery, long before this statute came into being. See Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 132 F.3d 949, 967 (4th Cir.1997) (concluding that the statute passes constitutional muster because “crimes of violence motivated by gender have a substantial adverse effect on interstate commerce”).
I also note that the language used is not that crimes of violence, motivated by domestic abuse and discord, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. I would call attention, in this regard, to the Brzonkala dissent’s statement:
Ignoring entirely the overarching change in Commerce Clause analysis wrought by Lopez [514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (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 national 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.’”
132 F.3d at 974, 975, 977 (Luttig, C.J., dissenting).
Accordingly, I would REVERSE the conviction in this case, realizing that Page may still be prosecuted, and/or sued civilly, for his actions in Ohio state court.

. United States v. Bailey, 112 F.3d 758 (4th Cir.1997), distinguished VAWA and kidnapping because the former required "a spouse or intimate partner" as victim. Id. at 767. Surely kidnapping in this case cannot be the "underlying crime of violence” in view of the jury’s acquittal on that charge, yet the majority says “the jury could have found kidnapping to be the underlying crime of violence.” Can the jury both acquit and convict based on the same charge? I think not.