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9th Circuit (Eventually) Rules Inmate's Hands Not a Dangerous Weapon

By Eric Lipman

One great thing about having the dual advantages of lifetime tenure and a cadre of clerks at your command is that you can feel free to wax poetic -- or rhapsodic, depending upon your nature -- about things that the man on the street wouldn't spend a lot of time debating. Lowering the Bar, with its usual flair, brings us a recent example from the 9th Circuit. In United States v. Rocha (PDF), the court reversed a federal inmate's conviction for assault with a dangerous weapon. Because it was undisputed that he used nothing but his bare hands in the attack at issue. Sounds like the right decision. So how could the court have taken nine pages to get from point A to point B? As follows: Well, we could first discuss our "multi-faceted test for determining whether an object is a dangerous weapon," although the defendant was not holding any objects whatsoever. We could then engage in a lengthy review of cases finding that "objects that have perfectly peaceful purposes may be turned into dangerous weapons and that such use may be punished under the federal assault statute." Those cases all seem to make perfectly good sense, except for...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).