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Assault & Battery

Oklahoma Assault and Battery Attorney

While most people have heard the term “assault and battery,” few understand its true legal meaning. Assault and battery are actually two separate acts, though they often occur together.

Defining Assault and Battery

Assault is an intentional attempt to cause harm to another person. Battery, on the other hand, is the actual use of force against another person. Put another way, assault is taking a swing at someone while battery is the punch actually making contact.

Because a person may attempt to harm someone without actually making physical contact, he or she may be charged with assault only. However, in most cases where physical contact was made, assault and battery will both be charged because the attempt (assault) generally precedes the act (battery).

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Penalties for Assault and Battery

Oklahoma law distinguishes several different types of assault and battery, depending on the circumstances of the case. For instance, you may be charged with domestic assault or domestic abuse if you had a relationship with or shared a household with the victim. In other cases, assault and battery may be charged as a felony.

The two basic assault and battery charges are simple assault and misdemeanor assault and battery.

  • Simple assault (making a threat or attempting to harm someone) can result in a fine of up to $500 and up to 30 days in jail
  • Misdemeanor assault and battery (attempting to harm and actually making physical contact) may be punished by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to 90 days in jail

Call the Hunsucker Legal Group at (405) 544-2992 to schedule a free, no-risk case consultation today.

Our FAQ

  • What is assault and battery against a special victim in Oklahoma?

    In Oklahoma we don’t have any statutes that refer to special victims getting special treatment, if you will. But if you wanted to, we do have some laws in Oklahoma, such as the assault battery on a law enforcement officer. We also have assault and battery upon a medical technician, those kinds of—I mean, you could consider those special victims because there are special statutes to protect them while they’re in the course of doing their job. There are also certain statues that protect children a little differently. For example, we have the driving-under-the-influence charges in the state of Oklahoma. There is also a law in Oklahoma that has a felony charge for child endangerment by DUI whereby any, if you are arrested for DUI or charged with DUI and you have a child in the car that is under the age of 18, they can charge you with felony child endangerment. So there’s not a per se special victims unit or special victims crimes in the state of Oklahoma like you see on TV with the Law & Order Special Victims Unit where they deal with sex crimes and stuff. There are no dedicated—to the best of my knowledge— in the state of Oklahoma, dedicated units to those crimes. And there’s no designated special victims.

  • What are some possible defenses against assault and battery charges in Oklahoma?
    First of all, if you’re not the instigator of an incident, f you’re not the aggressor in an incident, if you are attacked, you have the right in Oklahoma to defend yourself. But you can only respond with like force. For example, if a person comes up and is using hands, feet, non-deadly weapons, then you cannot pull out a gun and shoot them. That is, that’s an escalation of violence that is above, the response was not proportionate to the threat. Basically if you’re acting in self-defense, that is a defense to assault and battery. Or if you could show that it was an accident, that would be a defense—that could be a defense to assault and battery. Assault is verbally accosting someone, basically. Battery is where you’re actually laying hands on somebody in an unwelcome manner. So if you yell an obscenity at somebody and they take offense and think, “Well, I’m afraid he’s going to come hit me.” “Well, what I said was not directed at you.” That could also be considered a defense because you’re not directing that at them, they had no reason to believe that you were threatening harm against them. With a battery if you could show that you didn’t touch the person, or that it was an accident, that you had no intent to harm them or even touch them, that could be a defense.
  • Can you be charged with assault and battery in Oklahoma even if you believe you acted in self-defense?

    You can always be charged with a crime, even if self-defense is your defense. Because self-defense is an affirmative defense. Once you raise self-defense as an affirmative defense, it is then appoint you to show that you were—that you had reason to believe you were in fear for your life, or for your well-being. The state then has a duty or has the burden to show that your belief or your fear was not reasonable. So it’s when you raise, when you raise self-defense, you can act in self-defense but you have to make sure that you are acting, truly acting in self-defense, because they can still charge you with a crime, you just use self-defense as your defense.

    And I’ll give you a prime example: Let’s say that you were at a nightclub and someone came up and started pushing you, and shoving you, calling you dirty names, and took a swing at you. And you swung back and knocked him out. One punch knocked him out. And to you, that was the end of it, and you walked away. And the person come to and says, “Well, I had to have been sucker-punched. Because there’s no way that he could knock me out.” So now he’s going to sue you, or press charges for assault and battery. Well, they’re going to come and arrest you, they’re going to come fingerprint you, and take your mugshot, and file charges against you for assault and battery. But your defense is, there was no assault and battery; he accosted me, he attacked me. I acted in self-defense. So usually the defense of self-defense only comes up when you’re responding to allegations against yourself. Or against that person.

  • What is a deferred sentence in Oklahoma and can it apply to an assault and battery case?

    A deferred sentence in Oklahoma is a type of probation usually extended to first-time offenders of most crimes. It does apply to assault battery, but it’s not always offered and it depends on the circumstances of the justice system in Oklahoma. Our incarceration rates are extremely high and they’re not always looking to put somebody in jail. However, they need tools in order to keep that from happening. But, yet still, rehabilitate what they consider to be offenders. So what they’ve come up with and what the state has come up with, is deferred sentence. Basically what it is, is you go in there and say, okay you need to either plead guilty to the charges or no contest to the charges, whichever the case may be. But as part of your plea negotiation, the state says, okay if you’ll do these things, over this period of time—one year, two years, five years, even up to 10 years—in the state of Oklahoma, you can be on a deferred sentence. The court will not enter an adjudication of guilt. It appears as if they found you guilty, but you—but there is no finding of guilt. There is no conviction to the crime either, while you’re on probation, or if you’re successful after your probation is up. Instead what happens is, at the time of the plea, the defendant enters a guilty or no contest plea, whichever is able to be negotiated. The judge says, “Okay, I’m going to defer sentencing until whatever date, for whatever period of time.” Which means that that person is on probation for that period of time. During that time they have to do certain things. For example, with a DUI, they have to do a drug and alcohol assessment, DUI school, victim’s impact panel, potentially some community service, a judicial assessment of however much money in court costs and cost of incarceration.

    With an assault battery, it could be an anger management class that they have to complete. But once they complete all of that and they pay all their fees and court costs and everything, as long as they’re in compliance, then when the date that their deferred sentence is over with, in some cases—in many cases in Oklahoma—the defendant does not have to reappear. The court automatically withdraws their plea of no contest or guilty, reenters a plea of not guilty for the defendant, and dismisses the charges. So there’s no, there’s never a conviction that appears on the books for that particular charge. What is nice about that, as far as most people are concerned, is on a true first offender, especially a young adult or young teenager, or whatever, is that upon completion of a deferred sentence, they may then be eligible for an expungement. Whereby they can get their arrest records sealed, and their court records sealed where the general public cannot go out and search that person and find a conviction on them. It truly gives the individual or the defendant a second chance, if you will, of being a productive citizen of society. In all those instances, though, even if they qualify for the expungement, due to a deferred sentence, the law enforcement will always be able to see it.

  • What is Assault in Oklahoma?
    Well, assault would be a willful or unlawful attempt with force or violence to do some kind of hurt to another. It’s not actual contact, just an attempt to use force on somebody else.
  • What is Battery in Oklahoma?
    That would be the willful or unlawful use of force or violence upon another person. So you actually do make physical contact with them.
  • Does assault always precede battery in Oklahoma?
    The assault does, yes. You can have a battery without the assault if it’s charged that way. Technically every battery includes an assault. But not every assault has a battery.
  • What are some potential penalties for assault or assault and battery in Oklahoma?
    Well, assault in itself is a misdemeanor. It carries up to 30 days or a fine of $500 or both, up to a fine of $500 or both. And then assault and battery is also a misdemeanor if it’s just on somebody else. Up to 90 days in jail, or a fine up to $1,000 or both.
  • When is assault and battery considered a felony in Oklahoma?
    Domestic A&B with a dangerous weapon, that is a felony carrying up to 10. And then Domestic A&B with a deadly weapon, that too is a felony. Then you have a domestic A&B with a pattern of abuse, and then aggravated assault and battery, which we talked about earlier. And then it gets more specific with aggravated A&B. You get aggravated A&B on a law officer, some kind of government agent, a police officer. That’s general. Then you get aggravated A&B upon state employees, which also covers A&B on police officers. So all these are felonies. They all carry a different range of punishments. Then you have A&B on emergency personnel. We’ve experienced that quite a bit, especially in the DUI field. You have somebody who’s been taken in to get a blood draw, they all of a sudden come to a realization of what’s happening, they start kicking, they kick some medical personnel, all of a sudden not only do they have a DUI, they get an A&B on a medical personnel, same thing with police officers. We get a lot of those just stemming from the DUI. And then you’ve got A&B on a lady who’s pregnant or someone who’s pregnant. That too, will get you into the felony range. A&B by strangulation, that will take it into the felony range as well.
  • Are Oklahoma courts strict when prosecuting assault and battery crimes?
    Typically, the DA is going to file it as an A&B on a police officer. If they read the facts and it’s clear that, let’s say they get in an accident and it’s not really the alcohol that’s causing the person to act out—let’s say they got in the accident and were pumped full of pain meds, and then when they wear off, that person’s in pain, becomes irate, kicks medical personnel, they’ll charge it, but usually we can get it to where they will reduce it back down to just simple A&B to misdemeanor. Or at least that’s the goal. But they always charge the major offense and then they make you work to get it knocked down to a misdemeanor.
  • DEFENDING OVER 300 CRIMINAL CASES A YEAR John Hunsucker, Director on the Board of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Association
    Serving as Oklahoma’s NCDD State Delegate, John is also a Faculty Member of the National College for DUI Defense. John and the Hunsucker team surpass the required continuing education each year and train and/or instruct not only on a statewide level, but nationally also.

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