Page:Denard Stokeling v. United States.pdf/12

10 To get around Johnson, Stokeling cherry picks adjectives from parenthetical definitions in the opinion, insisting that the level of force must be “severe,” “extreme,” “furious,” or “vehement.” These adjectives cannot bear the weight Stokeling would place on them. They merely supported Johnson’s actual holding: that common-law battery does not require “force capable of causing physical pain or injury.” Ibid. Johnson did not purport to establish a force threshold so high as to exclude even robbery from ACCA’s scope. Moreover, Stokeling ignores that the Court also defined “violence” as “ ‘unjust or improper force.’ ” Ibid. (emphasis added). As explained above, the common law similarly linked the terms “violence” and “force.” Overcoming a victim’s resistance was per se violence against the victim, even if it ultimately caused minimal pain or injury. See Russell, Crimes and Indictable Misdemeanors, at 68.

In the wake of Johnson, the Court has repeated its holding that “physical force” means “ ‘force capable of causing physical pain or injury.’ ” Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 19–20) (quoting Johnson, supra, at 140); see also Castleman, supra, at 173–174 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

Finding this definition difficult to square with his position, Stokeling urges us to adopt a new, heightened reading of physical force: force that is “reasonably expected to cause pain or injury.” For the reasons already explained, that definition is inconsistent with the degree of force necessary to commit robbery at common law. Moreover, the Court declined to adopt that standard in Johnson, even after considering similar language employed in a nearby statutory provision, 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8)(C)(ii). 559 U. S., at 143. The Court instead settled on “force