One of the most common types of felonies occurring in this country is assault crimes. While a simple assault is, in most cases, not considered a felony by most courts-depending on the nature of the crime-aggravated assault or a crime that carries with it certain criminal characteristics is considered and punishable by felonious standards.
Below, we review exactly what defines a criminal act as an offense of this nature, what it looks like as a felony, how this relates to battery charges, and also how this may affect your criminal records search on a particular individual accused and convicted of this crime.
In order to best understand what makes this criminal charge by legal definition, an assault; it is most necessary to begin with a working definition of the offense. While each state may define this crime with slight variations, the basic definition is the following: an offense occurs when “one person tries to or does physically strike another or acts in a threatening manner to put another in fear of immediate harm”. With this in mind, there are also four variables that most courts consider as necessarily being present when a crime of this kind has occurred. These are: 1. “There must be an apparent and present ability to carry the crime out, 2. It must be an unlawful attempt, 3. There must be an intent of committing injury with this act, and 4. There must be a fear on the party of the victim that bodily injury will be incurred by this act”.
While the previous refers to assault in general legal terms, we take a closer look at aggravated crime in order to best understand what makes this offense felonious. Aggravated assault is the more serious type of the crime and “occurs when one tries to or does cause severe injury to another, or causes injury through the use of a deadly weapon”. This calls into the question of how battery involves itself in assault charges, and the best way to examine battery as it relates to this crime is that whereas the former is the threat of the act, battery is the carrying out of the act-the actual violence.
With this in mind, it can be very difficult to ascertain how serious assault charges may be in a particular criminal record, since states greatly differ in how they view assault charges. There are two basic variables that affect how states view assault charges. As noted earlier, assault is typically considered a necessary counterpart to battery, since most criminals not only threaten or intend on committing the act, but actually carry it out. While this may seem reasonable, not all states consider one as being a part to the whole of another. The second of the variables that affect assault charges is how the particular state may view the topic of consent. In many states, many liberties are given potential criminals that affect how assault charges are defined. There are a handful of relationships that are allowed certain potent defense, and these are: the police in an effort to thwart crime or harm being done, a parent using physical constraint to discipline their children, and also a person defending themselves, another, or their property. While none of these should be considered means to an end or a reason to use excessive force, they are plausible defenses in most states.
With this in mind, how a certain state considers an instance of this crime, can result in lesser assault charges, less serious punishment, or acquittal of this indictment. This, of course, will be reviewed as such, with these characteristics of offense in tow, in a potential offender’s criminal record.