It is an offense under the California Penal Code 243d to touch someone else in a harmful or offensive manner or inflict serious injury on them. Touching another person and causing them serious injury can lead to an aggravated battery accusation. Battery with serious bodily injury attracts severe punishment, including fines and a jail term. A battery conviction with serious bodily injury could also affect other aspects of your life. For example, securing credit, a house, and even employment upon conviction can be challenging. You could also face stigmatization since society will not embrace you as it did before your sentence. If you face battery with serious bodily injury charges in Bakersfield, the California Criminal Lawyer Group can help you to create a solid defense to fight your charges.

Understanding Battery Causing Serious Bodily Injury

According to California law, battery with serious bodily injury is also known as aggravated battery. Under Penal Code 242, battery is defined as an unlawful application of force or violence against someone else. You could face charges under PC 242 even if the victim does not sustain physical harm or experience pain due to the touch. Making an offensive physical touch on someone is enough for you to face charges under PC 242.

However, to face charges under Penal Code 243d, battery with serious bodily injury, the touch must be offensive, non-consensual, and severe enough to inflict harm on another person. If the prosecutor accuses you of battery with serious bodily injury, the prosecutor must prove the following elements:

  • You willfully touched someone else in an offensive manner.
  • The person suffered severe physical injury.
  • You did not act in self-defense or defense of others.

Unlawful Touching

According to Penal Code 243d, touching another person means that you come into contact with another person. The touch could be direct or indirect. You can touch a person through their clothing, using an object, or having a third party touch them.

For example, you could shove your partner out of anger. In the incident, your partner falls on a child, injuring them. In this case, the touch was not only forceful but also willful. Similarly, the touch that caused the injury to the child was indirect because the shove to your partner caused the injury to the child. In this case, you could be guilty of battery with serious bodily injury for inflicting injuries on the child through indirect touch.

The prosecutor could also produce the object you used to substantiate the accusations against you if you used an object to cause injury to the victim. Using a knife or a gun makes it more likely for the judge to give a guilty verdict.

The prosecutor will likely call the witnesses to testify if there is no physical evidence. A witness could claim that you shouted or angrily shoved the victim. In this case, the judge can rely on the witness testimony to make the final judgment.

Serious Bodily Injury

You can only face charges under Penal Code 243d if the victim suffers serious bodily injury. Serious bodily injury impairs a person's physical health. However, the victim does not necessarily need to undergo medication. The judge will always examine the facts presented in the case to determine whether an injury is serious. Some injuries that meet the serious bodily injury threshold include:

  • Loss of bodily function or protracted impairment.
  • A cut under the eye that needs stitches.
  • Severe disfigurement, bone fractures, or broken bones.
  • A lost tooth up to the root.
  • Wounds on eyebrows and lips requiring sutures.
  • Broken teeth.
  • Loss of consciousness.

Penalties For Battery With Serious Bodily Injury Charges

A violation of Penal Code 243d is a wobbler offense. You could face misdemeanor or felony charges, depending on your criminal record or the facts of your case. If the judge convicts you of a misdemeanor, you could face the following penalties:

  • A fine that does not exceed $1,000.
  • A jail term that does not exceed one year in county jail, or both.

The judge could also recommend a summary or misdemeanor probation instead of a jail term.

If the judge charges you with a felony, you could face the following penalties:

  • A fine that does not exceed $10,000.
  • A jail term that does not exceed four years in state prison, or both.

The judge could also recommend formal or felony probation as an alternative to your jail term. Additionally, you could face enhanced penalties under Penal Code 12022.7 if you commit felony battery and cause the victim to suffer great bodily injury. Serious bodily injuries are typically significant physical injuries that are not necessarily permanent. They are moderate bodily harm or more severe than minor. They include:

  • Second-degree burns.
  • Broken bones.
  • Dog bites.
  • Contusions.
  • Brain damage.
  • Paralysis.
  • Gunshot wounds.

Battery with serious bodily injuries does not include emotional scarring, minor physical harm, or financial losses.

You could face sentence enhancements under Penal Code 12022.7 if you inflict injuries on the victim. Just like under PC 243d, the judge has discretion under PC 12022.7 to decide whether the injuries meet the threshold of battery with serious bodily injuries and if a penalty enhancement should apply. The judge will consider the following factors when making their judgment:

  • If the victim's injury needs immediate medication.
  • The injury's physical pain.
  • The severity of the injury.

The actual time the additional penalties will take will depend on the circumstances surrounding your charges. The general rule is that you will face an enhanced and consecutive jail term that does not exceed three years for battery with serious bodily injury. According to PC 12022.7(a) to (e), you could face the following sentence enhancements:

  • You could face an additional five-year jail term if the injury resulted from domestic violence.
  • You could face an additional five-year jail term if you caused the victim to suffer paralysis or become comatose because of a brain injury.
  • If the victim was a minor under the age of five, you could face an additional jail term of six years.
  • You could face an additional five-year jail term if the victim is 70 or older.

Defenses For Battery With Serious Injury Charges

You can present one of several legal defenses to fight aggravated battery. Your attorney will create a defense depending on the circumstances of your charges. Some of the defenses you could present include:

No Serious Injury

You can only face charges under Penal Code 243d if you commit a battery and inflict serious injury on the victim. However, it is at the judge's discretion to decide whether the injury is severe. A fractured bone cannot qualify as a serious injury if it does not impair physical function. The juries and judges always rely on the following factors to determine the seriousness of an injury:

  • If the injury is sufficient to affect the victim's ability to work.
  • If the injury impairs a person's drive and ability to carry out ordinary chores.
  • If the injury affects the victim's mobility.

Your attorney could also use the above factors to show the judge that the victim's injuries were not serious.

A victim does not have to go to the hospital or undergo medication for an injury to meet the serious injury threshold. On the other hand, even if the victim undergoes medication or hospitalization, it is not automatically assumed that the victim suffered a severe injury. A person can exaggerate their symptoms to make a doctor write a medical report corroborating the person's claims. Your attorney could seek the services of a medical expert to show the inconsistencies between the injury suffered and the symptoms alleged. The judge could reduce your charges to assault or simple battery if there is no serious injury.

Accidental Touching

If your touching was intentional, you can only face charges under Penal Code 243d. There is no deliberateness in accidental contacts. For example, you could accidentally bump into someone in a crowded street, causing them to fall and suffer bruises on their hands. However, even if the touch was accidental, the victim could still sue you. The judge will not convict you of battery with serious bodily injury if your contact with the victim was not intentional. However, you must provide sufficient evidence showing that your touch was accidental.

The issues that always arise when determining whether a touch meets the accidental threshold include the following:

  • Whether you make physical contact while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
  • You aim to hit a particular person, but you end up hitting a different person.

You cannot claim that the touch was accidental if you intended to hit one person and end up hitting another. In this situation, missing the person you targeted does not make you innocent. Your intention to hit the person you targeted is transferred to the victim, even if he/she was not your target.

You could have stumbled while drunk and bumped into another person, causing them to suffer an injury like a broken arm. In this case, you did not act willfully. You are, therefore, not guilty of aggravated battery. Unfortunately, your innocence does not give you full freedom from being liable. You could face charges for being under the influence in public under Penal Code 647(f).

You Acted In Self-Defense Or To Protect Someone Else

Self-defense is a popular defense strategy in most battery cases. Self-defense is an affirmative defense in which you must reasonably believe your life is in danger. You must show that you must apply force to protect yourself from imminent harm.

You can only succeed with this defense if you prove the following issues to be true:

  • Given the circumstances, you applied force that was not more than necessary and reasonable.
  • You believed that you needed to use force to protect yourself or another person from imminent danger.
  • You felt your or another person's life was in danger, and the risk of bodily injury was real.

Self-defense allows you to pursue the person attacking you if necessary to prevent the risk of harm to you or another person. Your attorney could claim that you responded to the victim's aggression to defend yourself or someone else from suffering physical harm or death.

Related Offenses

Several other crimes could be charged alongside PC 243d, including:

Mayhem — Penal Code 203

Penal Code 203 defines the crime of mayhem as unlawfully or maliciously attacking someone in a manner that causes disability or disfigurement. Under this statute, acting maliciously means doing a wrongful act deliberately or acting with the unlawful intent to annoy or injure someone else. You cannot face mayhem charges if your act was an accident and you did not intend to do something wrong.

Under Penal Code 203, simple mayhem is a "general intent" offense. You would be guilty of mayhem even if you did not specifically intend to inflict serious injury on another person.

One way you could be guilty of mayhem is to injure another person in a manner that leaves them with a disability. The disability does not have to be permanent for you to face charges under this statute. You could face mayhem charges as long as the injury persists for a material amount of time.

A violation of Penal Code 203 attracts the following penalties:

  • A fine that does not exceed $10,000.
  • A jail sentence of two, four, or eight years in a state prison.
  • Formal or felony probation.

You could face an enhanced sentence if the victim is:

  • Quadriplegic or a paraplegic.
  • Developmentally disabled.
  • Deaf or blind.
  • Below the age of 14 years.
  • 65 years or older.

If any of the above is true, you could face one or two years of sentence enhancement. This could happen if you were aware or reasonably should have known that the victim had the above status.

Mayhem is generally a violent felony and hence a strike crime according to the "Three Strikes" law. If you have a mayhem charge and are subsequently convicted of any felony, your jail term is twice the standard sentence. You will face a jail term of 25 years to life in a state prison if you accumulate three strike charges and one or more mayhem charges.

The defenses you could present to challenge your mayhem charges could include the following:

  • You were falsely accused.
  • Self-defense or defense of others.
  • You did not act intentionally or maliciously.

Simple Assault — Penal Code 240

The crime of assault is defined under PC 240 as an unlawful attempt, along with the present ability, to inflict violent injury on someone else. If the prosecutor accuses you of assault, he/she must prove the following elements:

  • You acted willfully.
  • The nature of your actions would result in the direct use of force on another person.
  • You knew the facts that a reasonable person would conclude were likely to result in the direct use of force on someone else.
  • You had the ability to use force on the victim.

A violation of PC 240 is usually charged as a misdemeanor. The penalties you could face include the following:

  • A fine of up to $1,000.
  • A jail term that does not exceed six months in a county jail.
  • Summary or misdemeanor probation.

You could face stringent penalties if you assault an individual in certain professions. You could face severe penalties if you assault the following individuals:

  • Nurse or doctor offering emergency medical care.
  • Animal control officer.
  • Process server.
  • Police officer.
  • Search and rescue member.
  • Code enforcement officer.
  • Traffic officer.
  • Lifeguard.
  • Emergency medical technicians or paramedics.
  • Firefighter.

You could face a fine of up to $2,000 and a jail term of one year in county jail if you assaulted any of the above individuals and knew that they did. You could also face a fine of up to $2,000 if the victim is a parking control officer carrying out their daily chores.

Several defenses are available that you can use to challenge your assault charges, including:

  • You acted in self-defense or defense of another person.
  • You are a victim of false accusation.
  • You did not have the ability to inflict force or violence.
  • You did not act willfully or with the required intent.

Simple Battery — Penal Code 242

The crime of battery is defined under PC 242 as the deliberate and unlawful application of force or violence on someone else. If the prosecutor accuses you of battery, this statute requires that he/she prove the following elements:

  • You touched another person.
  • Willfully.
  • In an offensive or harmful manner.

If the prosecutor fails to prove the above elements, you cannot face the charges under Penal Code 242. Penal Code 242 is also known as the "242 police code".

Under California law, physical contact with someone can lead to battery charges. The victim does not need to suffer injury; even a slight contact is sufficient for you to face charges under this statute. You could also commit battery if you touch another person's clothing or indirectly use an object.

The judge could charge you with a misdemeanor if you commit battery on a police officer or other protected person without causing injury to them. The possible penalties you could face include the following:

  • A fine that does not exceed $2,000.
  • A jail term that does not exceed six months in a county jail.
  • Summary or misdemeanor probation.

Depending on your case, the court could also order you to participate in community service or counseling.

You can only succeed in fighting simple battery if you hire a skilled criminal defense attorney. Your attorney could help you present the following defenses:

  • You did not act willfully.
  • You acted in self-defense or defense of others.
  • Parents' right to discipline a child.

Domestic Battery — Penal Code 243(e) (1)

It is a crime under PC 243(e)(1) for any person to apply force or violence against the following individuals:

  • A cohabitant.
  • The other parent of your child.
  • Former or current dating partner, fiancé, or spouse.

Penal Code 243(e)(1) requires that the prosecutor prove the following elements for you to face the charges:

  • You intentionally touched another person in an offensive or harmful manner.
  • You had an intimate relationship with the victim.
  • You did not act in self-defense or defense of another person.

Domestic battery is always a misdemeanor. Misdemeanor charges could attract the following penalties:

  • A fine of up to $2,000.
  • A jail term that does not exceed one year in a county jail as opposed to a state prison.

You could also serve summary or misdemeanor probation instead of a jail term. You are required to complete the following if the judge awards you probation:

  • Domestic violence classes or batterer's treatment programs.
  • Appropriate counseling program if one is not available.

The following are the defenses you could use to challenge your domestic battery charges:

  • You are a victim of false accusation.
  • Your act was not deliberate.
  • You acted in self-defense or defense of another person.

Sexual Battery — Penal Code 243.4

It is a crime under PC 243.4 for a person to touch someone else's private parts without their permission, purposely for arousal, abuse, or self-gratification.

Misdemeanor charges without aggravating factors usually attract the following penalties:

  • Summary probation for five years.
  • A fine of up to $2,000 or $3,000 if the victim was your employee.
  • A jail term of up six months.

Felony charges with aggravating factors attract the following penalties:

  • Registration as a sex offender.
  • A fine of $10,000.
  • Felony probation.
  • A jail term of two, three, or four years in prison or an additional three to five years in prison if the victim suffers serious bodily injury.

Find A Criminal Defense Attorney Near Me

Judges are not lenient with people facing battery with serious bodily injury charges. A conviction under PC 243d could have devastating consequences. The charges could negatively influence your quality of life. You need a skilled attorney to convince the prosecutor to reduce your charges in a plea bargain negotiation or even prove your innocence. At California Criminal Lawyer Group, we have experienced attorneys who can help you secure a favorable legal outcome in Bakersfield. Contact us today at 661-750-8230 and talk to one of our attorneys.