Court Opinion

ID: 9493942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:24:08.483489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:07.357607
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
It seems to me that, in determining the intent requirement or element of mens rea for assaulting a federal officer, we should return to the common law crime of assault for enlightenment and determine whether assault and battery at common law required a specific mental state, absent which there would be no crime. At common law:
The violence or force attempted or done must be unlawful. Accordingly, it would not be an assault nor an assault and battery if the force is justifiable, in pursuance of lawful public or domestic authority, e.g., where an officer makes a lawful arrest ... or a parent or teacher moderately corrects his child or pupil, or where it is applied in necessary and reasonable defense of one’s person or property.... *811Consent of the person against or upon whom the violence is attempted or inflicted is a defense, if the consent is valid....
Clark and Marshall, Crimes 659 (6th ed. 1958).
Certainly, more consciousness of wrongdoing than simply an intent to do an act is necessary for the crime. The crime of assault normally requires a form of guilty knowledge — whether we call it scienter, malice, specific intent, or give it some other label. Presumably a law enforcement officer who assaults a federal officer who is resisting arrest would not have the requisite intent to do harm to another to qualify as a crime under the federal statute. A doctor who otherwise assaults such an official by amputating his foot with consent would not have the requisite state of mind. Protection of home and family from a federal official who is illegally breaking and entering would not give rise to the requisite intent. Thus it seems to me that the precise mental state of the accused becomes important in such assault cases.
Up until the last two decades, during which the federal criminal law has become increasingly harsh and rigid, the presumption was in favor of a mens rea requirement for federal crimes. In Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 500, 71 S.Ct. 857, 95 L.Ed. 1137 (1951), the Supreme Court said that “the existence of a mens rea is the rule of, rather than the exception to, the principles of Anglo-American criminal jurisprudence.” Whatever we decide to call the mental element required for a federal assault, whether “general,” “specific” or otherwise, a distinct mental element requiring some deliberation and more than simply an intent to do an act must be present. I, therefore, agree with those Circuits which have reached the opposite result from our Court in this case. United States v. Simmonds, 931 F.2d 685 (10th Cir.1991); United States v. Taylor, 680 F.2d 378 (5th Cir.1982); United States v. Caruana, 652 F.2d 220 (1st Cir.1981).
I would permit a defendant to introduce evidence of diminished capacity to form the intent to commit the federal assault. If we agree that a mental element is required to commit the crime — -as it seems to me, we must — then we should permit a defendant to show that he did not possess the necessary state of mind. Otherwise, assault and battery in federal law now becomes a mindless strict liability crime contrary to its common law origin and the enlightened policy respecting mens rea followed in federal law during most of the last two centuries. Hence, if I correctly understand what our Court has held in this case, I disagree and respectfully dissent.