Delligatti v. United States

Majority — Thomas

Joined by: Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that it is impossible to deliberately cause physical harm — whether by action or inaction — without using "physical force" within the meaning of § 924(c)(3)(A). The Court extended its earlier ruling in United States v. Castleman (2014), which held that knowingly causing bodily injury necessarily involves the use of physical force, reasoning that the same logic applies to § 924(c) even though that statute requires a higher degree of force than Castleman's statute did. The majority explained that force can be applied indirectly — for example, by poisoning someone's drink — and that deliberately doing nothing to prevent harm is just as much a "use" of force as a direct physical act; a mother who lets her child drink bleach, intending the child to die, is using the bleach's harmful properties as her instrument. The Court also reasoned that the phrase "against the person of another" simply requires that another person be the deliberate target of the force, which is always true when someone intentionally causes harm by omission. Finally, the majority noted that intentional murder — the clearest example of a "crime of violence" — has long been understood in American law to include killing by omission, so excluding omission-based crimes from the elements clause would produce an unreasonable result.

Dissent reasoning

The dissent argued that the plain text of § 924(c)(3)(A) cannot be stretched to cover crimes of omission, because each key word in the statute points toward active physical conduct. The word "use," the dissent noted, has long been understood by the Court itself to carry an "active meaning" — implying action and employment, not inertia or inaction. "Physical force" means a violent physical act applied to a body, not the passive allowance of pre-existing natural forces to cause harm. And the phrase "against the person of another" further signals that the statute targets volitional, directed conduct. The dissent also pointed to contextual evidence: a 1981 Senate report specifically noted that a dam operator who refuses to open floodgates would not commit a "crime of violence" because he did not "use physical force"; a large database of ordinary English usage showed that "use of physical force" virtually always refers to assertive physical contact; and Congress has explicitly mentioned omissions in dozens of other federal criminal statutes, suggesting its silence here was deliberate. The dissent further argued that the residual clause of § 924(c) — not the elements clause — was the natural home for omission-based offenses, and that expanding the elements clause to swallow omission crimes renders the residual clause pointless. Finally, the dissent contended that even if some ambiguity remained, the rule of lenity (the legal principle that ambiguous criminal laws should be read in favor of the defendant) would require ruling for the defendant.