What You Need to Know About Battery Charges in Illinois
By Dan Noll on October 15th, 2015 in
A person commits the offense of battery when he intentionally or knowingly, without legal justification and by any means, causes bodily harm to or makes physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with another individual. Let’s break that down into its component parts.
Number one: You have to knowingly or intentionally and without legal justification. You have to know or intend to create bodily harm or make an insulting or provoking act, and you can not have any legal justification. What that means is it can’t be self-defense, something where the law allows you to make those contacts. You can be a police officer, arrest somebody. That is a legal justification for a battery.
The next part of it is that you cause bodily harm to or make physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature. Bodily harm is fairly self-describing. As long as there’s any bodily harm, that can be bruising, broken bones, broken noses, redness. Getting punched in the face, it doesn’t break anything, but it leaves a little red mark. That could be considered to be bodily harm.
The more common way that individuals are charged with misdemeanor battery in Springfield, Illinois is that they are charged by what’s known as the insulting or provoking language. That means that the state does not need to prove that there was actual body harm, just that the contact was that of an insulting or provoking nature. For example, shoving. Most people would consider being punched in the face to be of an insulting or provoking nature. Choking. Those types all fall under an insulting or provoking nature.
That is the definition for a misdemeanor battery in Illinois. There are additional battery charges such as aggravated battery, domestic battery, aggravated battery with a firearm. All of those charges have separate elements that need to be proven and have separate penalty structures, and if you are being investigated or have been charged with any sort of battery offense, please feel free to give our office a call. We’d be happy to sit down with you, discuss your case, talk to you about what potential sentences you’re looking at, what potential options you have, strengths and weaknesses of your case, and we’d be happy to represent you on that charge.
The lawyers at the Noll Law Office are skilled criminal defense attorneys who emphasize communication and honesty. Our lawyers utilize their training, knowledge and skills to defend our client’s Constitutional rights. If you have been charged with a criminal offense, don’t talk to anyone until you talk to Noll.