Page:Denard Stokeling v. United States.pdf/20

Rh degree of force that is “violent,” “substantial,” and “strong”–“that is, force capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person.” See id., at 140; see also id., at 142 (“As we have discussed… the term ‘physical force’ itself normally connotes force strong enough to constitute ‘power’–and all the more so when it is contained in a definition of ‘violent felony’ ”).

The majority, slicing Johnson up, concentrates heavily on the phrase “capable of causing physical pain or injury” and emphasizes the dictionary definition of the word “capable” to suggest that Johnson “does not require any particular degree of likelihood or probability” of “pain or injury”–merely, as with any law professor’s eggshell-victim hypothetical, “potentiality.” Ante, at 10–11. Our opinions, however, should not be “parsed as though we were dealing with the language of a statute,” Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 341 (1979), and in any event, the majority’s parsing goes astray. It is clear in context that the Court in Johnson did not mean the word “capable” in the way that the majority uses it today, because Johnson rejected an interpretation of “physical force” that would have included a crime of battery that could be satisfied by “[t]he most ‘nominal contact,’ such as a ‘ta[p]… on the shoulder without consent.’ ” 559 U. S., at 138. As any first-year torts student (or person with a shoulder injury) quickly learns, even a tap on the shoulder is “capable of causing physical pain or injury” in certain cases. So the Court could not have meant “capable” in the “potentiality” sense that the majority, see ante, at 11, ascribes to it. Rather, it meant it in the sense that its entire text indicates: “force capable of causing physical pain or injury” in the sense that a “strong” or “substantial degree of force” can cause physical pain or injury. See Johnson, 559 U. S., at 140. The phrase denoted, that is, a heightened degree of force.

Florida robbery, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme