正在編輯 Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person


== Sir William Blackstone ==

* Law cannot draw the line between different degrees of violence
* Therefore totally prohibits the first and lowest stageof it
* Every man's person being sacred
* No other having the right to meddle with it
* In any the slightest manner

== Offences against the person ==

* Ladder of offences based on  
** Harm caused (result-focused)
** Mens rea
* Mix pof common law and statute
** Assault and battery also torts
* V must be natural person
** Same rules as for murder

== Ladder ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+
! rowspan="2" |s.18 OAPA
|Wounding with intent to cause GBH/causing GBH with intent
|-
|Life imprisionment
|-
! rowspan="2" |s.20 OAPA
|Maliciously wounding/inflicting GBH
|-
|5 years
|-
! rowspan="2" |s.47 OAPA
|Assault occasioning actual bodily harm
|-
|5 years/6 months
|-
! rowspan="2" |Common Law
|Battery; 6 months/fine
|-
|Common assault; 6 months/fine
|}

== Crown Prosecution Service Guidance ==

# Start by determining level of injury
# Considering all circumstances
# Select appropriate charge

== Terms ==
'''Assault and Battery''': 2 separate common law offences

=== s.39 Criminal Justice Act ===

* Statutory Footing
* The act:
** Common assault and battery shall be summary offences
** Person guilty of either of them shall be liable to
*** Fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale
*** Imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months
*** Or both
* Does not define the offences

Battery shall be charged as "assault by beating"

* DPP v Taylor and Little [1992] Q.B. 645.

Two separate offences often used interchangeably

Need to distinguish

== Common Assault ==

=== Actus Reus ===
An act which causes another person to apprehend the infliction of immediate, unlawful force on his person. (Collins v Wilcock [1984])

The act can be:

* Indirect (e.g. threaten with dog)
* Words can be sufficient (spoken or written)
* Omission (no case law but seems likely)
* Conditional
** Not if threats excludes imminent possibility
** Test
*** Will violence follow unless V takes action (e.g. hands over money)
*** If yes: imminent threat

The victim must apprehend

* Infliction of immediate, unlawful force on his person
* Infliction of immediate force
* Infliction of unlawful force
* Must be a causal link between D’s behaviour and the victim’s apprehension

==== Apprehend ====

* No need for physical contact
* Test is effect on V (approach from behind/sleeping V would not qualify)
* No need for V to be afraid of D
* Was D’s behaviour a factual and legal cause of V’s apprehension of immediate force?
** Subjective: what did V believe? (e.g. did not know gun was fake)
** PLUS
** Objective: based on facts as V saw them, is that an apprehension of imminent violence?

==== Immediate/imminent ====

* Immediate: without pause or delay
* Courts have widened
** Imminent: V thinks about to happen or threatening to happen
* Silence could be an assault (Ireland and Burstow [1997])
** The silent caller intends by his silence to cause fear
*** He is so understood
** V is assailed by uncertainty about his intentions
*** Fear may dominate her emotions
*** It may be the fear that the caller’s arrival at her door may be imminent.
* Constanza (1997)
** 20-month campaign of harassment by D against V including threatening letters leading to clinical depression.
** V was caused to apprehend violence ‘at some point not excluding the immediate future’

=== Mens Rea ===
Intention or reckless as to causing apprehension of immediate, unlawful, personal force

==== Venna (1975) ====

* Intention/Recklessness to
* Cause V to apprehend
* Infliction of
** Immediate unlawful force on his person

=== Smith v Chief Superintendent Woking Police Station ===

* V had a ground floor flat
** D seen looking through window at V
*** V frightened
**** D intended
* D argued
** V did not know what D was going to do next
* Judge
** No need for a finding that what she was frightened of
*** Which she probably could not analyse at that moment
** Some innominate terror of some potential violence
* It was clearly a situation where
** The basis of fear was unknown what D was going to do
*** But whatever he might be going to do next
**** Sufficiently immediately for the purposes of the offence was sth of violent nature

== Battery ==

=== Definition ===
Any conduct by which D intentionally/recklessly inflicts unlawful personal violence on V (Rolfe)

=== Faulkener v Talbot ===

* Any intentional/reckless touching of another person
** without the consent of said person
** without lawful excuse
** need not be hostile, rude or aggressive
* Not necessarily violence
** More to do with the right to privacy/bodily autonoy
** Invasion of another's right not to be touched or violated
* Common law: Collins v Wilcock

=== CPS charging standards Violent Crime 2022 ===

* Grazes
* Scratches
* Abrasions
* Minor bruising
* Swellings
* Reddening of the skin
* Superficial cuts

=== Actus Reus ===