North Carolina Assault by Strangulation Remains Crime of Violence

US v. Robinson: In 2022, in Rice, the Fourth Circuit held that a conviction in North Carolina for assault by strangulation is a “crime of violence” under the Sentencing Guidelines. As I wrote at the time:

Rice argued that the assault conviction was not a crime of violence because it the only intent required to sustain a conviction was culpable negligence. Had his prior offense been “run of the mill assault . . . he would have a point.” The complicating factor here was strangulation, which by its nature involves conduct that “could not be accomplished absent an intentional, knowing or purposeful state of mind.” This was true “even if not expressly stated” in North Carolina law. In addition, no “ordinary person would say that a person could strangle another without a purposeful, knowing or intentional state of mind.” Nor could Rice point to any cases sustaining convictions for strangulation that did not involve purposeful conduct.

Robinson, like Rice, was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and had his base offense level increased because of a prior conviction for assault by strangulation. He argued that after the Supreme Court’s decision in US v. Taylor (decided shortly after Rice), the Fourth Circuit’s precedent was no longer valid and his prior conviction was not a crime of violence. Specifically, Robinson argued that Rice relied on “a survey of the conduct in published state cases” and Rice’s “failure to identify a single case where the conduct described was negligent or reckless,” a methodology that “cannot be squared” with Taylor.

In affirming the outcome of Rice, the Fourth Circuit did not fundamentally disagree with Robinson on the holding of Taylor, but ultimately concluded that Rice would have reached the same conclusion even without considering such survey data. The court noted that in Rice it had “found that North Carolina law suggests that assault by strangulation requires intentional conduct” and that it “independently interpreted the text of the North Carolina statute . . . and concluded that a person cannot commit the act of strangling without knowing or intending it.” The survey analysis “in Rice was only added to the opinion to provide additional confirmation for our holding.”