The Oyez Project: Criminal Procedure Issues - Assault

Garcia v. United States

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Ladner v. United States

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McLaughlin v. United States

In the morning of July 26, 1984, Lamont McLaughlin and a companion, both wearing stocking masks, entered a bank in Baltimore. McLaughlin displayed a handgun and ordered everyone in the bank to put his hands up and not to move. While McLaughlin remained in the lobby area holding the gun, his companion placed about $3,400 in a brown paper bag. A police officer apprehended the two as they left the bank. The police then found that McLaughlin's gun was not loaded. Ultimately, McLaughlin pleaded guilty to charges of bank robbery and bank larceny and was found guilty of assault during a bank robbery "by the use of a dangerous weapon." The Court of Appeals affirmed.

United States v. Lanier

David W. Lanier was convicted under 18 U.S.C. Section 242 of criminally violating the constitutional rights of five women by assaulting them sexually while he served as a state judge. The jury had been instructed that the Government had to prove, as an element of the offense, that Lanier had deprived the victims of their Fourteenth Amendment due process right to liberty, which included the right to be free from sexually motivated physical assaults and coerced sexual battery. The District Court denied Lanier's motion, which sought to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the law is void for vagueness. The en banc Court of Appeals vacated Lanier's convictions for "lack of any notice to the public that this ambiguous criminal statute includes simple or sexual assault crimes within its coverage." The Court of Appeals held that the law may be imposed only if the constitutional right, said to have been violated, is first identified in a decision of the U.S Supreme Court, and only when the right has been held to apply in a factual situation "fundamentally similar." The court regarded these combined requirements as substantially higher than the "clearly established" standard used to judge qualified immunity in civil cases.