Newport Beach Assault Criminal Lawyer
Assault is a very serious crime and one that the police in Newport Beach are familiar with. You may be out with some friends having a great time, going to dinner, and stopping at bars on a Friday or Saturday night when things just go wrong. You decided to visit the Newport Beach peninsula to meet up with friends and on your way to the car someone yells something at you from across the street, someone accuses you of looking at their girlfriend, or someone pushes you. The next thing you know you are having a fight which was not how you wanted the night to end. Every night in Newport Beach the police get calls about assaults, respond, and arrest people. You may feel like you are living in a nightmare because you got arrested and now are facing charges that just don’t make sense to you or are contrary to who you are. You had to put money up for bail, and now you have a court date and you are terrified that you could be facing jail time or lose your job. You may feel like the criminal justice system isn’t going to hear your side of the story. This is where you we need to protect yourself by contacting an experienced Newport Beach assault attorney at the Johnson Criminal Law Group. You are innocent until proven guilty and it is our job to protect you.
Police officers in Newport Beach get calls like this all the time. Their policy is to come to the scene and interview witnesses, prepare a report, and pass that on to the District Attorney. You can be sure that someone is going to get arrested based on witness statements or visible injuries. Someone can make an allegation against you and the police arrest you based entirely on that allegation. It will be up to you and your lawyer to make sure that your side of the story is conveyed as soon as possible either to the District Attorney before court or at court.
There are specific elements to assault that apply in Newport Beach as well as the rest of California. Assault requires under the Penal Code the wilful application of force combined with the ability to carry out the threat of harm, injury or commit a violent injury against another person. Willful means acting willingly and on purpose. This does not mean you accidentally hurt someone. “Application of force” means the touching of another person in a harmful or offensive manner. You must have actually come in contact with someone to apply force. The “present ability to harm” means the actual intent to use force against a person is not required. It is only required that you had the ability under the circumstances to apply force that could harm someone. “Another person” could include a person’s body, clothing or something attached to that person. It could even include their car.
If you are convicted of Penal Code section 240 you could be punished by a fine not exceeding $2 000 and up to six months in jail. You might wonder, what does it take for a person to be convicted of an assault in Newport Beach California? In order for the prosecution of convict someone of PC 240 the prosecutor much prove each and every of the following elements: one) the defendant willfully and unlawfully committed an act that resulted or whatever resulted in force being used upon another person; 2) the defendant had knowledge of information that would cause a reasonable person to assume what the defendant was doing would result in force being used against another person; three) the defendant was aware that when the action was taken he or she had the ability to exert force on the other person; and four) the defendant was not acting in self-defense.
You need not have had the specific intent to cause harm because assault is a general intent crime. this means that you did not have to have any specific intent but just acted on purpose. You also did not have to intend to harm someone but committed an act that was likely to cause harm. There are also enhancements that could apply to your case. And enhancement is something that gets added to a charge that can increase the penalties for the offense. Enhancements may come into place when the alleged victim is someone who is worthy of special consideration under the law or if the location where the crime took place is treated differently under the law. If the individual that is assaulted is law enforcement or if the crime is committed on a public bus, someone charged could be facing additional punishment pursuant to an enhancement added to the charge.
The most important thing that someone accused of assault in Newport Beach can deal is to contact experienced criminal defense attorney like the attorneys at Johnson criminal Law Group who have nearly two decades of defending visitors, vacationers, and residents of Newport Beach in assault cases. We have seen assault cases in every bar come up from the least serious to the most serious. We have defended street fights, bar brawls, and fights at hotels. No case is too big or too small.
