United States v. Tina Jones ( 2007 )

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
June 14, 2007
No. 06-14310 THOMAS K. KAHN
Non-Argument Calendar CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 06-00003-CR-4-RH-WCS
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
TINA JONES,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
_________________________
(June 14, 2007)
Before ANDERSON, DUBINA, and CARNES, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Tina Jones appeals her conviction, after jury trial, of forcible assault on a
federal officer. 18 U.S.C. § 111. Jones was an inmate at the Federal Correctional
Institution in Tallahassee, Florida.1 She had a tense relationship with one of the
correctional officers, Lieutenant Stanford. Stanford had accused her of using a
broken broomstick in a fight in the recreation yard. Jones claimed that Stanford
was falsely accusing her, while Stanford believed that Jones had fabricated those
allegations and others. After a hearing regarding Jones’s involvement in the fight,
Jones encountered Stanford in a hallway outside the hearing room. When Jones
began to verbally attack Stanford, he ordered her to cuff up. Jones refused to let
Stanford cuff her. Before Stanford touched her, he tripped and fell to the ground,
apparently through no fault of Jones.
The trial was principally concerned with what happened next. Stanford
claimed that Jones intentionally jumped on top of him and struck him (including
twice on the head), resulting in injuries to his elbow and finger. Jones, on the
other hand, claimed that Stanford pulled her down, and that any contact with
Stanford was accidental or incidental to him pulling her down. The judge
instructed the jury that it could convict Jones of forcible assault only if, inter alia,
she intentionally struck or jumped on Stanford. The jury convicted Jones of that
1
In stating the facts, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government
and draw all reasonable inferences and credibility choices in favor of the jury’s verdict. See
United States v. Taylor, 480 F.3d 1025, 1026 (11th Cir. 2007).
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offense, and thus necessarily concluded that Jones struck or jumped on top of
Stanford.
On appeal, Jones argues that her conviction was improper because the court
gave an erroneous jury instruction. We review jury instructions de novo “to
determine whether they misstate the law or mislead the jury to the prejudice of the
objecting party.” United States v. Hansen, 262 F.3d 1217, 1248 (11th Cir. 2001).
But “[w]hen the jury instructions, taken together, accurately express the law
applicable to the case without confusing or prejudicing the jury, there is no reason
for reversal even though isolated clauses may, in fact, be confusing, technically
imperfect, or otherwise subject to criticism.” United States v. Beasley, 72 F.3d
1518, 1525 (11th Cir. 1996). We therefore begin by examining whether the jury
instructions in this case contained a correct statement of the law.
The assault on a federal officer statute reads as follows:
(a) In general. Whoever–
(1) forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or
interferes with any person designated in section 1114 of this title
while engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties;
or
(2) forcibly assaults or intimidates any person who formerly
served as a person designated in section 1114 on account of the
performance of official duties during such person’s term of service,
shall, where the acts in violation of this section constitute only simple
assault, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year,
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or both, and in all other cases, be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than 8 years, or both.
(b) Enhanced penalty. Whoever, in the commission of any acts
described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon
(including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails
to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or
both.
18 U.S.C. § 111.
Subsection (a) is the relevant provision here. It makes a distinction between
simple assault (punishable by one year’s imprisonment) and forcible assault
(punishable by eight years’ imprisonment). We first addressed this distinction in
United States v. Fallen, 256 F.3d 1082 (11th Cir. 2001). The defendant in Fallen
argued that a threat of force against a federal officer constitutes forcible assault
only if the threat is accompanied by physical contact. Id. at 1088.
We rejected that narrow interpretation. First, we defined simple assault as
“common law” assault: “a willful attempt to inflict injury upon the person of
another, or. . . a threat to inflict injury upon the person of another which, when
coupled with an apparent present ability, causes a reasonable apprehension of
immediate bodily harm.” Id. (citation omitted, omission in original). We then
noted that a forcible assault “would therefore have to be something more” than
simple assault. Id. Finally, we held that an example of this “something more” is a
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“willful attempt or threat to inflict serious bodily injury, coupled with an apparent
present ability, which causes the intended victim a reasonable apprehension of
immediate serious bodily harm or death.” Id. (emphasis in original). As a result,
the defendant in Fallen was properly convicted of forcible assault, even though he
did not make physical contact with the federal officers, because he threatened to
cause serious bodily injury, which caused the officers to reasonably apprehend
immediate serious bodily harm. Id.In the instant case, Jones argues that she was improperly convicted of
forcible assault because the jury did not find that she attempted or threatened to
inflict serious bodily injury, or caused a federal officer to reasonably apprehend
immediate serious bodily injury or death. Instead, the district court instructed the
jury that Jones could be convicted of forcible assault if, inter alia, (1) she
“threatened or attempted to inflict bodily injury” on the federal officer, (2) “the
threat or attempt caused [the federal officer] to experience reasonable
apprehension that the threatened or attempted injury would occur,” and (3) “as part
of the assault or forcible resistance, the Defendant struck [the federal officer] or
jumped on his back.” In short, the court instructed the jury that it could find Jones
guilty of forcible assault only if it found that Jones had committed a simple assault
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and that she had struck or jumped on the federal officer.2 When the jury convicted
Jones of forcible assault, it necessarily found that she had struck or jumped on Lt.
Stanford.
Jones argues that because the court did not give a Fallen instruction, the jury
did not necessarily find that Jones had threatened to cause serious bodily injury or
death, or that she caused a reasonable apprehension thereof. But contrary to
Jones’s contention, this omission did not necessarily mean the instruction
misstated the law. Fallen did not exhaust the category of forcible assault. Rather,
it simply held that “something more, such as” a threat to inflict serious bodily
injury, coupled with a reasonable apprehension of serious bodily injury, was
sufficient to elevate simple assault to forcible assault. Fallen, 256 F.3d at 1088
(emphasis added). Fallen did not say that proof of an intentional striking or
jumping was insufficient. It had no occasion to do so, since there was no physical
contact in that case.
In a recent published decision, United States v. Martinez, 2007 U.S. App.
LEXIS 11557 (11th Cir. 2007), we made explicit what was merely implicit in the
2
The court reiterated its distinction between simple assault and forcible assault when it
instructed the jury to consider the lesser included offense of simple assault “only if you find the
Defendant not guilty of the greater offense of assaulting or forcibly resisting a federal officer and
initiating actual physical contact.”
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reasoning of Fallen: that physical contact is sufficient to elevate simple assault to
forcible assault, even when that physical contact does not result in actual bodily
injury. Id. at *15. Because the jury instructions in this case provided that Jones
could be convicted of forcible assault only upon proof of a simple assault plus
physical contact, they contained a correct statement of the law. A reversal of
Jones’s conviction is therefore not warranted on this ground. See Beasley, 72 F.3d
at 1525.
Jones’s other challenges to the jury instructions are equally without merit.
Accordingly, Jones was properly convicted of forcible assault, and her conviction
is
AFFIRMED.
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