In Curtis Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 140 (2010), the Court defined the term "physical force" in the elements clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA") to mean "violent force—that is, force capable of causing pain or injury to another person." In United States v. Castleman, 134 S. Ct. 1405, 1413-14 (2014), the Court expressly left open the question whether the causation of harm necessarily entails the use of "violent force." In United States v. Vail-Bailon, 868 F.3d 1293 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc) cert denied 138 S. Ct. 2620 (2018), the Eleventh Circuit, by a margin of 6-5, held that causation of harm necessarily entails the use of "violent force," reasoning that "violent force" is measured by the harm resulting from the offense, not by the degree of force used to commit it. In the proceeding below, the Eleventh Circuit applied the analysis from Vail-Bailon to reach the conclusion that Mr. Colon's Indiana battery conviction was an ACCA predicate offense.

The question presented here is: under Curtis Johnson, does the causation of bodily harm necessarily entail the use of "violent force"?

Does the causation of bodily harm necessarily entail the use of 'violent force'?