Building a Defense For Second Degree Assault Charges in Greenwich
Second-degree assault is a Class D Felony; that means that a person is facing up to five years in prison, up to three years of probation, and up to five thousand dollars in fines or any combination of those three.
Second-degree assault lawyers in Greenwich use a number of defenses and mitigating factors to refute the prosecution’s evidence in these cases.
Defense of Intent
The defense attorney will always look at the intent of the person committing the crime. This is because they are trying to see if there was something else that the person charged with second-degree assault was trying to accomplish. For example, if the defendant was just looking to hurt somebody but did not believe or intend to hurt the person to such a degree that it caused severe injury.
Defense of Injury Severity
The other part a defense attorney will look at and use to try to defend the case is the severity of the injury. In a lot of cases, a second-degree assault defense lawyer will use consultation with medical experts to see if the allegedly injured party reached a level of serious bodily injury.
Is Self Defense a Viable Defense?
The last traditional defense is the idea of self-defense. The lawyer will look to see if there was there a reason that the person charged with second-degree assault had the need to strike the other person in order to keep themselves safe.
What Mitigating Factors Do Attorneys Look At?
The only mitigating fact an attorney will want to look at is what potentially prompted the incident. The judge is less likely to punish somebody as severely if they felt that the thing that prompted the assault was more understandable.
If the victim said something very nasty to the person’s children or wife or something along those lines where it would be very sensitive and there would be an expected reaction, most judges would be more lenient with the defendant in that circumstance rather than if the defendant or somebody attacked another person for no really good reason.
Long Term Consequences
The long-term consequences of a second-degree conviction differ from those of a first-degree assault conviction slightly.
It is the same type of long-term consequences of dealing with felonies, but because of the severity or the classification of the crime, second-degree assault long term consequences are far lower, it is all the same potential consequences but just less of a lasting impact or a severe impact.
A second-degree conviction will still result in many lost opportunities for employment, many lost opportunities for licensure, and many other rights and opportunities that may be forfeited.
A person’s civil rights and employment opportunities will be fewer and they may not last as long. The stigma associated with it is far less concerning to the public at large and can probably be overcome with the passage of some time.