G. MURRAY SNOW, District Judge.
Pending before the Court is Defendant Brandyn Blatchford's Motion to Dismiss Count Four of the Indictment, (Doc. 40). For the following reasons, the Court denies the motion.
On the evening of April 5, 2016, Sergeant Curtis of the Navajo Police Department identified a victim of a violent assault, RW, at Fort Defiance Indian Hospital.
Due to these prior convictions, Blatchford was required to register as a sex offender. As of January, 2016, Blatchford registered a home in New Mexico as his permeant address. The government asserts that this New Mexico home is not his true residence and that he actually splits his time between his mother and grandmother's homes in Arizona.
Blatchford was charged in a four count indictment: Count One alleges that he committed assault with a dangerous weapon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(3), Count Two alleges that he committed assault resulting in serious bodily injury in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(6), Count Three alleges that he failed to register as a sex offender in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250, and Count Four alleges that he committed a crime of violence while an unregistered sex offender in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(c).
The defense moves to dismiss Count Four because neither Count One nor Count Two are "crimes of violence" under Title 18.
Section 2250 does not define "crime of violence." But, two other statutes within Title 18, §§ 16 and 924(c)(3) have virtually identical definitions of the term. The Court will thus apply the force provision of both definitions.
Determining whether a crime is a crime of violence is a question of law for the court rather than a question of fact for the jury. See United States v. Amparo, 68 F.3d 1222, 1224 (9th Cir. 1995) ("The defendant asserts that whether this offense is a `crime of violence' is a question of fact for the jury to decide, and not a question of law for the judge. To the contrary this circuit has adopted a categorical approach to determining which offenses are included under section 924(c) as `crimes of violence' obviating the need for fact finding by the jury."). The categorical approach requires courts to examine "the elements of the offense rather than the particular facts underlying the defendant's own conviction." United States v. Dominguez-Maroyoqui, 748 F.3d 918, 920 (9th Cir. 2014). If it is determined that the offense criminalizes a "broader swath" of criminal activity than the criminal activity encompassed in the crime of violence definition, then a crime is not a crime of violence. Id. (internal quotations omitted). Therefore, "[a]n offense qualifies as a crime of violence in all cases or in none." Id. (internal quotation omitted). For the following reasons, both Counts at issue in this case are crimes of violence.
Assault with a dangerous weapon is a crime of violence. See United States v. Juvenile Female, 566 F.3d 943, 947-48 (9th Cir. 2009) (finding that "[a] defendant charged with the first variant, assault with a deadly or a dangerous weapon, must have always `threatened [the] use of physical force'" (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 16(a))). To successfully convict Blatchford of assault with a dangerous weapon, the government must prove, in relevant part that
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Model Criminal Jury Instruction 8.7. By their terms, the elements of the offense require at a minimum a "display of force that reasonably caused him to fear immediate bodily harm."
The Supreme Court's ruling in Johnson I does not affect this finding, as other courts examining this issue have found that "dicta in Johnson I assumed that an assault and battery with a dangerous weapon was a `violent felony'" because the Supreme Court "quoted Black's definition of `violent felony' as `[a] crime characterized by extreme physical force, such as murder, forcible rape, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.'" United States v. Whindleton, 797 F.3d 105, 115 (1st Cir. 2015), cert. dismissed, 137 S.Ct. 23 (2016), and cert. denied, 137 S.Ct. 179 (2016) (quoting Johnson I, 559 U.S. at 140-41); see also United States v. Scott, No. 312CR00051RCJVPC, 2017 WL 58577, at *2 (D. Nev. Jan. 4, 2017) (collecting cases from other Courts of Appeals "have uniformly ruled that assault-or battery-type crimes containing a dangerous weapon-type element necessarily satisfy Johnson I's requirement that any force used, attempted, or threatened be `violent.'").
Assault resulting in serious bodily injury is also a crime of violence. The elements of the crime of assault resulting in serious bodily injury are that 1) "the defendant assaulted the victim by intentionally striking or wounding him or her" and 2) "as a result, the victim suffered serious bodily injury." Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Model Criminal Jury Instruction 8.9. "[T]he mens rea requirement [for assault] is that the volitional act be willful or intentional; an intent to cause injury is not required." United States v. Lewellyn, 481 F.3d 695, 697 (9th Cir. 2007).
Thus the elements of the crime require a showing that the defendant intentionally struck or wounded the victim and that the striking or wounding resulted in serious bodily injury. Therefore the crime fits within the definition of a crime of violence. See Juvenile Female, 566 F.3d at 948 (finding that a defendant that committed "assault resulting in bodily injury, necessarily must have committed an act of force in causing the injury")
For the reasons explained above, the crimes alleged in Counts One and Two of the indictment constitute crimes of violence, and thus the Defendant's Motion to Dismiss is denied.