Assault and Battery 1st Degree

Assault and battery 1st Degree in South Carolina

Assault and battery 1st degree requires that you caused or could have caused great bodily injury to another person.

Hi, my name is Dale Savage and I’m a criminal defense attorney here in Charleston, SC. Today we’re discussing about assault and battery 1st degree charges.  It is a felony carrying up to 10 yrs. in prison and the state will take these charges seriously.

What’s the Law?

Assault & battery 1st degree is when a person unlawfully injures another person, and:

  1. Touched someone’s private parts w/o consent, either under or above clothing, with a lewd and lascivious intent; or
  2. It happened during the commission of a robbery, burglary, kidnapping, or theft.

It can also mean when a person offers or attempts to injure another person with the present ability to do so, and:

  1. It is accomplished by means likely to produce death or great bodily injury; or
  2. It happened during the commission of a robbery, burglary, kidnapping, or theft.

Felony 0-10 yrs. prison.

What is Great Bodily Injury?

The severity of the injury is what drives this type of offense to be a felony.

Great bodily injury means an injury which:

Injury which causes a substantial risk of death or which causes serious permanent disfigurement or protracted loss/impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ

  • causes substantial risk of death;
  • causes serious permanent disfigurement; or
  • loss /impairment of the function of a bodily member or organ.

Defenses

Similar to assault and battery 2nd the typical defenses to this type of crime depending on the facts is self-defense or misidentification meaning someone else did it.

Good defense attorneys know that you’re going to need to conduct your own thorough investigation to establish any type of alibi defense or challenge any evidence related to forensic testing such as DNA evidence.  Because of the serious nature of these cases the government is going to conduct their prosecution to the full extent they can under the law.  It’s vital that you be prepared to defend that.

Charleston, SC Criminal Defense Lawyer

If have been charged with Assault and battery 1st degree and want to discuss your options, please call me at (843) 530-7813.  I hope this video was helpful and thanks for watching.

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