Since there’s some questions about exactly what constitutes battery in Florida, here’s the statute:
784.03 Battery; felony battery.—
(1)(a) The offense of battery occurs when a person:1. Actually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other; or2. Intentionally causes bodily harm to another person.(b) Except as provided in subsection (2), a person who commits battery commits a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.(2) A person who has one prior conviction for battery, aggravated battery, or felony battery and who commits any second or subsequent battery commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. For purposes of this subsection, “conviction” means a determination of guilt that is the result of a plea or a trial, regardless of whether adjudication is withheld or a plea of nolo contendere is entered.History.—s. 5, Feb. 10, 1832; RS 2401; s. 1, ch. 5135, 1903; GS 3227; RGS 5060; CGL 7162; s. 2, ch. 70-88; s. 730, ch. 71-136; s. 19, ch. 74-383; s. 9, ch. 75-298; s. 172, ch. 91-224; s. 5, ch. 96-392; s. 4, ch. 2001-50.
Chapter 784 of the Florida Code also covers the following, with full definitions and explanations at the link:
CHAPTER 784ASSAULT; BATTERY; CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE
784.011 Assault.784.021 Aggravated assault.784.03 Battery; felony battery.784.041 Felony battery; domestic battery by strangulation.784.045 Aggravated battery.784.046 Action by victim of repeat violence, sexual violence, or dating violence for protective injunction; dating violence investigations, notice to victims, and reporting; pretrial release violations; public records exemption.784.047 Penalties for violating protective injunction against violators.784.048 Stalking; definitions; penalties.784.0485 Stalking; injunction; powers and duties of court and clerk; petition; notice and hearing; temporary injunction; issuance of injunction; statewide verification system; enforcement.784.0487 Violation of an injunction for protection against stalking or cyberstalking.784.049 Sexual cyberharassment.784.05 Culpable negligence.784.062 Misuse of laser lighting devices.784.07 Assault or battery of law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical care providers, public transit employees or agents, or other specified officers; reclassification of offenses; minimum sentences.784.071 Assault or battery on a law enforcement officer; missing while in line of duty; blue alert.784.074 Assault or battery on sexually violent predators detention or commitment facility staff; reclassification of offenses.784.075 Battery on detention or commitment facility staff or a juvenile probation officer.784.076 Battery on health services personnel.784.078 Battery of facility employee by throwing, tossing, or expelling certain fluids or materials.784.08 Assault or battery on persons 65 years of age or older; reclassification of offenses; minimum sentence.784.081 Assault or battery on specified officials or employees; reclassification of offenses.784.082 Assault or battery by a person who is being detained in a prison, jail, or other detention facility upon visitor or other detainee; reclassification of offenses.784.083 Assault or battery on code inspectors.784.085 Battery of child by throwing, tossing, projecting, or expelling certain fluids or materials.
trollhattan
That’s a lot of ground yet, oddly, not a word about jumper cables.
Expelling certain fluids?
geg6
I’ll just cut and paste what I put at the end of the last thread here:
Adam L Silverman
@geg6: Ayep!
Brachiator
I wonder how often this happens.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Forget about Brachiator, its Florida!
Clearly you’ve not spent a lot of time here in the Sunshine State!
Zinsky
It’s unfortunate that the death penalty can’t be applied in this case, and also to the offender’s employer! (/snark)
Sad_Dem
Michelle Fields told Trump to stop lying. I predict a storm of vicious trolling coming her way.
? Martin
I see this sort of thing in workplaces all the time and it needs to stop. This was a workplace incident. What gets excused in bars or at concerts or sporting events is a different matter – those are venues of choice and people will respond accordingly. (I’m not condoning it there, just that people will be more forgiving in voluntary scenarios and we shouldn’t view their forgiveness as being relevant to this case.) The reporter was at work. Trump was at work. Lewandowski was at work.
Imagine your coworker did that to you. Is that reasonable behavior?
schrodinger's cat
@Sad_Dem: Good for her for standing up to the bully.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I don’t know how often it happens now, but it’s a fairly safe bet it happened (edit)
morebefore they added that as an aggravating factor. All those weird things you see in criminal law should be understood as a list of stupid things people have done often enough for the legislature to pay attention.a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6: I’m too lazy to type out what I answered to that dude in that thread. You might recognize the scenario, however.
Sad_Dem
@schrodinger’s cat: She is already showing great courage.
bemused
Trump was just rambling on and on in Wisconsin making up crap every two seconds. When he says he just quotes articles I think he means the comment cesspool, not the actual articles. That’s where he gets all his material.
Mnemosyne
@Zinsky:
Yes, because getting charged with misdemeanor assault — an assault that got the victim fired from her job — is just like being executed. Your snark is way too close to what people have actually been saying.
scav
Workplace / public venue where those in control of the messaging are enciuraging violence and continue to condone the behavior.
Also, shouldn’t all those in favor of broken windows policing be out in force, praising the crackdown?
Geeno
@geg6: I have to say that while I’ve seen guys do it all the time. I can’t recall women doing it to each other, or a guy doing it to a woman that didn’t trigger a bouncer or a brawl.
Also, saying I’ve seen it isn’t the same as saying it’s okay.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Sad_Dem: If by vicious trolling you mean doxxing, threats of rape and murder, and threats against her family, I also see that in her very near future.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
We have to do harassment training at the Giant Evil Corporation every year, and they make a big point that the company is equally responsible for harassment by non-employees like vendors and clients, so we have to keep an eye on how non-employees are interacting with our employees.
IIRC, our host is a professor. If a student punched him in the face during office hours, would that be okay and no charges should be filed because it also happens between strangers in a dive bar with no assault charges? Context.
Amaranthine RBG
(1)(a) The offense of battery occurs when a person:
1. Actually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other; or
2. Intentionally causes bodily harm to another person.
Help me get this straight – since this is stated in the alternative, you either touch someone against their will – OR – intentionally cause harm, I take it that you need not cause any harm for there to be a battery, correct?
As in, if Mr. Lewandowsky had said, “I am going to boop you on the nose” and the reporter said “No, don’t” and he had then very lightly touched the tip of her nose with his pinkie – that would be a battery, correct?
The Other Chuck
So there are distinct charges between assault and battery. Is the only difference that an assault doesn’t have to connect?
The Other Chuck
@Amaranthine RBG: People have filed charges before on ground exactly that shaky. Tends to get tossed out as frivolous, since there is a fair amount of “no harm no foul” in the legal system, especially criminal justice. Civil suits are of a bit of a crapshoot, but even then the aggrieved party would need some jolly good luck getting it up the steps as they say.
Amaranthine RBG
Anyone got a definition of “bodily harm” in this context?
I recall past discussions about Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws about what was “great bodily harm” and it seems there was no consensus about that term either: Florida’s self-defense statute (§776.013(3)) says:
” A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
Bill E Pilgrim
@geg6: All I can think of is imagine if any Republican politician or FOX News reporter were yanked to the point of bruising by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager or Bernie Sander’s campaign manager. Just imagine that.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne:
The situation with professors gets very interesting. We do the same harassment training here and we hired an outside firm to run the training (who admittedly are very good) and they ran through different scenarios. The first was about witnessing someone viewing pornography and whether that was harassment/hostile workplace – with the expectation that it would be universally agreed to be so. A hand shoots up. “In my research we study the impact of pornography on society and part of that is surveying how pornography changes both in terms of content and method of delivery. Viewing pornography is academically relevant.” Everyone but the presenters saw that one coming. It then became a game with the audience to point out when the normal ‘this is unacceptable’ rules were actually acceptable inside a university. Being punched in the face by students has an appropriate context as well. We have a rather good set of martial arts instructors. Our drama program requires students/instructors to not only hurl obscenities and manhandle each other, but to practice it regularly. Sometimes they need to take their clothes off in public.
The point here being that context is actually the most important consideration, and that there are few hard and fast rules. The growing active recognition of context is what the PC brigade are upset about. They don’t want to acknowledge that you need to pay attention to when something is appropriate and when it’s hurtful. As my son is quick to remind, anyone who says ‘politically correct’ should be forced to rephrase using ‘treating people with respect’ instead and see if their position is still defensible.
Adam L Silverman
@Amaranthine RBG: Its the “reasonably believes it is necessary” portion of that statute that’s important. Not the great bodily harm. The former creates a completely subjective state for determining whether to defend oneself. At the time it passed a lot of people very publicly claimed that because of his general ignorance, and his ongoing attempts to legislate said ignorance into Florida law, that they reasonably believed that the continuing existence of State Senator Baxley place them or another at risk of death or great bodily harm. Therefore they would be justified under the Stand Your Ground law to shoot and kill said state senator. As far as I know no one took this from political hyperbole to practical application. To this day State Senator Baxley can still not define what he meant by “reasonably believes” when he’s asked about it.
Bill E Pilgrim
New York definition.
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: I was once almost punched by one of my professors who was undergoing an emotional crisis/breakdown due to severe family stress and issues. Does that count?
? Martin
@Amaranthine RBG: That’s a different thing. One determines when you are harmed. The other determines situations where you will be excused for harming others (presumably to protect against greater harm to yourself). The standards for those should be very, very different.
That is to say, we can establish that touching your nose is harm, but not harmful enough to give you permission to blow that person away.
Origuy
@Brachiator:
Amaranthine RBG
I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have brought up the Stand Your Ground mess. It only confuses things.
So, what is the definition of “bodily harm” in the context of the battery statute?
I can see that some people apparently think that “bruises” clearly qualify, but I’d be interested in the legal definition, if there is one.
Amaranthine RBG
@Origuy: I don’t know the context here – but “code violations” is a tool that some municipalities use to harass people, particularly people in low income housing. As in, “Code inspector here to make sure that no means of ingress/egress are blocked [or that your electrical panel isn’t overloaded] so I need to come into your apartment …. oh wait, what is this in plain sight on the table … is that one of them marijuana smoking devices? I’ll have to call the police about that …” Or, you’re going to be evicted not because you are black and your neighbors don’t like you, but because your grass is 2 inches too high and you leave laundry hanging out for more than 2 hours at a time”
Not saying this is what happened in those snippets, but “code inspector” is not as benign as it may sound at first
Steve in the ATL
@The Other Chuck:
That is what we were taught in law school. A punch is battery, a swing and miss is assault.
J R in WV
Those 784.083 and 784.085 items, wow, expelling fluids?
And one of my best friends is a county Health Department Inspector. Some time back, the county Health Departments began making it illegal to allow smoking of tobacco anywhere people are employed, excepting specialty stores selling tobacco. This upset many people who go to bars to drink and smoke cigs.
Eventually the inspectors demanded (and got) deputies to go with them to inspect bars (etc) and to enforce the no smoking requirements.
Then the Republicans took over the state government, and went about ending this terrible infliction of pain upon smokers ~ !!!! until the bar and restaurant owners went to the legislature and asked them to stay out of the issue, because their gross sales went up when people who don’t smoke could stand to be in the space where their business was being conducted.
Amazing.
But the fluids attack, I know what that is and all, but it still makes me sick to think about. Just yetch.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: I think the expelling fluids was added because of the concern that HIV could be transmitted during an altercation through spitting, ejaculation, etc. But don’t quote me on that. Its been a long time since I taught criminal justice, let alone criminal justice in/for Florida.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman:
Almost certainly not. Though possibly in Florida and Texas if you were the cause of the severe family stress. I won’t make any assumptions about the laws in those states.
I will say that probably twice a year I need to run someone (usually a professor) through the wringer for harassing one of my staff and I would say that severe stress is almost always the catalyst. No excuses, though. I do tolerate more of that behavior against me, however. Being in a higher level of authority, I have more ability to deal with aggressive behavior directly and their threats are empty – but I also recognize that I’m usually the one that pushed them over their stress capacity (my job is not an easy one). Nobody is going to fire me for dressing down a professor who is losing his/her shit, so I don’t take this stuff home, and I never feel physically threatened. But the confrontation needs to be in private and it needs to be resolved when the meeting ends. If my staff witness it, then we’re off to the lawyers. If they won’t resolve in that meeting, then we’re off to the lawyers. The office that handles these issues knows me extremely well.
Students never present problems. One of the greatest dysfunctions in higher education – the customers, the people paying for the service, are vastly less demanding than the employees. I cannot possibly itemize all of the bad outcomes that stem from that.
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: The guy decided he wanted every one of us in the pro-seminar to touch his manuscript for good luck as we were leaving class for the day before he submitted it for peer review. After ten people’s hands had touched it he noticed a smudge. I was sitting closest to him at the conference table that day and he noticed it as I was standing up to leave. He started to lose his shit. I was one of the instructors at the aikido dojo on campus. I just stood there with a neutral look on my face, didn’t advance, didn’t retreat, and let him freak while working out my countering strategy if he actually became violent. Everyone else in the seminar freaked as well and either started running or screaming. Once he stopped freaking out I made my exit and immediately contacted my doctoral chairs – one of whom was an associate dean and the other a center director. The next day I had a nice long chat with both the department chair and the departmental graduate coordinator. A lot of it focused on: 1) Despite Professor So and So being in very good shape and having served in the Army, I was not particularly worried for my own safety as I know I am able to defend myself if necessary, 2) the seminar room is not a place I should have to worry about defending myself, 3) this is part of an ongoing and repeated pattern of bizarre behavior and his problems should not be allowed to negatively affect anyone in that seminars academic standing, and 4) I’ve already documented this with both my doctoral chairs and with my Dad who is the head of the faculty union at one of the other Tier 1 schools in this state’s system. So if anything negative happens to me because of this nut, who’s class I’m only taking because you all begged me to because you were worried it wouldn’t get enough students to make – so I’m putting up with this crap as a favor to the department – there will be an accounting.
Four months later I was trying to talk down one of his students, a major in the People’s Liberation Army who had come to UF to do his masters and possibly a doctorate, because this moron gave him 40 minutes notice of his master’s defense. His student wanted to know if he would be allowed to get a gun to deal with this because had this been back home in China he simply would have had the professor executed.
Good times!
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
That’s the funny thing about the anti-smoking statutes: once they go into effect, bar and restaurant owners LOVE them, because all of a sudden the customers who hate cigarette smoke start showing up.
ETA: Not to mention that their labor costs go down, too, because their waitresses and bartenders aren’t constantly out sick.
We went to Las Vegas for a family wedding a couple of years ago and I hadn’t realized how spoiled I’ve gotten in California, where I almost never have to deal with smoking in an enclosed space. It was horrible, everything reeked, and my lungs seized up as soon as we stepped into any building. Ugh.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman:
I will admit, there are certain aspects of a Trump presidency that would make my job easier.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Very true.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I suspect they’re worried about losing business because they don’t understand collective action. Yeah, they might lose a lot of business if they were the only bar in town that stopped letting people smoke, because then the smokers really would take their business elsewhere. But if all the bars and restaurants in the state stop allowing smoking at the same time, the smokers can’t carry through on their threat and have to adapt to going for the length of a meal without a smoke. It’s the same basic logic that makes them so worried about minimum wage hikes. Yes, if they were the only business in town that had to raise wages, they might well go out of business, but if everyone has to do it at the same time, the effect on competition is minimal.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
We had a learning experience when we drove to Arizona via a different “scenic” route. When we stopped for lunch in Missouri, I noticed the smell as soon as we entered the dining room. Then in a nearly empty large room, a guy sat down right next to us, and fired up his noxious, poisonous herbal blend 5 feet from my nose.
We drove our asses off to get out of Missouri before we couldn’t go any more. Horrible!!
And why did that suicidal bastard choose to sit right beside us, when there were 50-60 empty tables – he could have sat 50 yards from us. But NO, “I’m gonna make you two sick if I can!!”
Missouri lost our tourist dollars forever right then, that moment. The taxes, the profits for business owners, all gone. There are states where things are just as interesting and beautiful as in Missouri, but don’t reek of toxic fumes.
When I see a person fire up a cigarette, I think of willingly ingesting arsenic or some other poison every day. You don’t get a high, you can’t stop, you lose your capacity to do physical things, like hiking across National Parks, drive in the Rocky mountains, and then you die of COPD or cancer after being limited to your couch for the last 5 or 10 years of your life.
How is this still legal? 50 years ago we didn’t know for a fact that it caused health issues, but today we know it’s a poison. Exposing kids to this is child abuse! Exposing other people to this is an assault ~!!
NCSteve
This is a pretty garden variety set of elements for criminal assault and battery. There’s no extra special Florida because the Olds tightness here. Perfectly consistent with what I learned in Criminal Law lo those many years ago when I was a 1-L.
The problem here is that most people don’t realize that laying unwanted hands on someone else is a crime most everywhere, not (for once) that Florida is a crazy place with crazy laws.
debbie
@geg6:
As someone who experienced a few bruises back in the day, I’m with you!
The Other Chuck
@Adam L Silverman:
The hell kinda fights are you getting in, son?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Steve in the ATL: Except in OH, where assault is the touch and menacing is the threat. “Battery” as people are describing it here, is part of assault. A swing and a miss is also assault here. A swing and a miss can arguable be menacing and may be charged that way.
Menacing can be hard to prove at times. I had a few cases where a construction worker, with a temper and a sentence served for homicide, would get pissed off and threaten his co-workers. So before trial I’d carefully explain to them that “an element of the charge is that you believed he would hurt you and you were scared.” And every g*ddamned trial we’d get to that part and the construction worker would provide a variation of “Hell no, I wasn’t scared. I ain’t a sissy, but having him yell that he was going to break my arms with the shovel he was holding over my head and then strangle me slowed the job down and the supervisor called the cops.” The guy walked at least 7 times because big burly men wouldn’t admit they were a tad skeered of a man who’d served time for killing someone and threatened them. He’d smirk and after a few months on another job we’d see him in court again.
Adam L Silverman
@The Other Chuck: Not me. I’m just providing what I think I remember of the justification for adding this. It may also have been because someone threw bleach or acid on someone or gasoline, etc.
Neil H
Some info I gleaned from an interview that Megyn Kelly did with Michelle Fields and Ben Shapiro: here.
Basically, my takeaway is that Michelle Fields didn’t want to file charges, and would have been happy with an apology. The wholesale attack on her character by the Trump campaign and Breitbart that came instead didn’t leave her with a whole lot of options, though. Considering the slurs and accusations leveled against her, she needs to demonstrate in some way that she was in fact manhandled by Lewandowski,, and isn’t making the whole thing up for “attention”. Basically, I think Michelle Fields had to press charges in order to clear her name.
(Incidentally, it feels really weird being on the same side as Ben Shapiro about something).
Cmm
The second definition of battery is for doing something that injures a person the same way the first definition would (as I said in the other thread, in GA it’s simple battery if it doesn’t leave a mark and battery if it does) but without touching them. Like throwing something across the room that hits them or forcing your way into a room where someone is trying to hold the door shut and the door whacks the other person in the face. Or dude hits or grabs girlfriend who is holding the baby and the baby falls and fractures his skull. That really happened — guy was charged with battery on the GF and aggravated battery on the baby even tho he never touched the baby directly. (The baby survived with a permanent depression in his skull but otherwise seems okay; Dad went to prison.)
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin:
I’ve seen setups in workplaces devoted to testing devices/software connected to the raw Internet in which there was a special room with a big label on the door noting that “mature content may be displayed”. Meaning, sometimes we have to browse porn in here, so it only happens in the specially marked zone.
Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)
@J R in WV: I lived in Columbia Missouri for a while. They banned smoking indoors years and years ago there.
There’s a reason it is (or was) a swing state – there’s blue bits, and very red bits, and turnout one way or the other pushes it around.
(to be fair, Columbia, despite being a college town isn’t as blue as you’d think it would be – an otherwise nice place to be though)
karen marie
My money is on, if not a plea to a lesser charge, or dropping of the charge, an acquittal. Florida has a particularly fucked court system. It is one of the few jurisdictions I refuse to transcribe. I won’t be a part of that level of stupidity.
karen marie
@Amaranthine RBG: It’s up to a jury but -anywhere but Florida, because, Florida, juries are made up of Floridians – bruises are “bodily harm.” There is no detailed definition, it is for the jury to find.
Richard Shindledecker
Now that the Trumpers are using pepper spray – Is that considered contact?