United States v. Stands Alone, No. 20-2018 (7th Cir. 2021)
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Correctional Officer Decker confiscated items from Stands Alone’s cell. Other officers later entered and removed additional items. Stands Alone was pacing, throwing clothes, and shouting. Decker ordered him to move toward the front of the unit. Instead, he returned to his cell. Decker followed him and warned that she would use pepper spray if he continued to resist. Stands Alone grabbed a fire extinguisher and lifted it to his chest; Decker deployed her pepper spray. Stands Alone discharged the fire extinguisher. Fire suppressant and pepper spray chemicals blew towards Decker, who experienced visual impairment and chemical burns. Stands Alone was charged under 18 U.S.C. 111(a)(1) and (b), which penalizes whoever “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with” federal correctional officers. Subsection (b) enhances the penalty for those who “inflict[] bodily injury” on the victim.
Stands Alone challenged the indictment as “defective,” arguing that assault is an essential element of section 111; the indictment did not allege “assault” and instead “merely provide[d] that he resisted, intimidated and interfered with” Decker. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the rejection of that argument. The government could secure a section 111(b) conviction by demonstrating that Stands Alone forcibly committed at least one of the six acts in section 111(a)(1) against a federal officer. Stands Alone’s interpretation “runs contrary to the textual language, rendering five of the six verbs in subsection (a)(1) superfluous.”
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