Understand Your Charges with the Help of an Assault Attorney

Getting charged with a crime can have long-lasting consequences on your personal, professional, and social life. Those consequences are amplified exponentially when the charge is something as serious as an accusation of assault. If you’ve been charged with an assault crime, it’s imperative that you hire a Houston assault attorney to help resolve your case, whether it’s clearing your name or helping you avoid inflated punishments that will keep you from starting over and putting your life back in order. In order for you to understand your charges, the following review explains the differences between two major forms of assault.

Understanding Assault and Battery

Most laws understand assault to mean an intentional threat to another person’s physical safety, whether it’s carried out or not. The mere threat to a person’s safety is enough to constitute charges of assault (which also helps policemen and other law enforcement officers to intervene without waiting for an actually injury to take place). The fear or threat of physical harm has to be grounded in evidence that the perpetrator clearly intended to harm the other person, most often through physical gestures, violent and aggressive approaches, or failed attempts to harm someone (for example, when the victim escapes). Battery technically means that an actual blow took place; therefore, when contemporary law refers to “assault and battery,” it’s an assault where actual physical contact and harm took place.

Understanding Aggravated Assault

Aggravated assault is more serious than assault. Most laws define aggravated assault as a threat to harm another person with something dangerous like a gun, or with the intent to commit serious crimes, like rape. Sometimes, it can be classified as “aggravated assault” if the victim belongs to a protected category, like the elderly, the young, and the mentally ill. Typically, aggravated assaults classify as felonies, while simple assaults are typically misdemeanors. Individuals can be charged with assault and battery or aggravated assault even if violence occurs from the other side. Simple charges may result in fines and jail time, while more serious charges can result in far graver consequences. If you have questions about your particular case, you should contact a Houston assault attorney immediately.