The D.C. Court of Appeals has issued a number of opinions over the last couple of years in which it has refined the definition of “significant bodily injury” under D.C.’s felony assault statute. In Nero v. United States, for example, the court found that a bodily injury was significant when a bullet passed through the complainant’s bicep, causing “obvious pain …
In Cheeks v. United States, a case issued a couple of months ago, the D.C. Court of Appeals interpreted the “interfere” provision of D.C.’s Assault of a Police Officer (APO) statute. (It is illegal under this statute to assault, resist, oppose, impede, interfere with or intimidate a police officer who is performing his official duties, and the court has had …
The Assault on a Police Officer (APO) statute is so broad that the D.C. Court of Appeals has had to issue multiple opinions to interpret it. In Edwin Cheek v. United States, 103 A.3d 1019 (D.C. 2014), an opinion it issued today, it interpreted that portion of the law that makes it illegal to “interfere” with a police officer while …
In law school and in preparing for the Bar Exam, we were taught the distinction between general intent and specific intent crimes. If it is a general intent offense, the government must prove only that the defendant intended to take the physical action that resulted in the harm; that is, that the defendant’s actions were not the result of a …
I put our star witness in jail. I have heard about prosecutors being slammed for doing this. One of my adjunct professors in law school – a prosecutor in Philadelphia – ended up on someone’s list of the top ten worst prosecutors in the country for having one of her witnesses in a murder case sit in custody for …
The Associated Press reported on the lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court in San Francisco alleging that current and former members of the U.S. military were sexually assaulted while serving: The 20 women and men filing the lawsuit claim they were harassed, raped or assaulted and suffered retaliation when they reported the incidents. The lawsuit names top Department of Defense …
Your client is 19 years old. She weighs 105 pounds and stands under five feet tall. Having been arrested for a minor offense, she sits handcuffed in a room surrounded by police officers. Her eyebrow is bleeding from a cut she suffered from being thrown up against a chain link fence. All the police officers are male. They are …
While the YouTube video is now posted all over the Internet, I first found out about Congressman Etheridge’s altercation with two students when checking out my website stats through Google Analytics. I found that visits to the Simple Assault page on my website had gone through the roof. My summary of the offense was also quoted and linked to …
Self-defense is an affirmative defense to simple assault and other assault charges in D.C. Self-defense is the use of force to protect oneself, one’s family or one’s property from a real or threatened attack. It is an affirmative defense, meaning that the defendant has the initial burden of raising it. In D.C., once the defendant has been able to introduce …