[00:00:00.08] I’m Enrique Latoison, and this video is brought to you by Commentary Creations, your three-minute lawyer.
[00:00:07.21] This is kind of a part two to the aggravated assault. Now, we’re talking about simple assault. Simple assault is easy for the most part. It’s a misdemeanor second-degree. It’s title 18, section 2701.
[00:00:19.15] Okay, so we’re talking about simple assault. We discussed in the previous video for aggravated assault. And I’m actually filming this the same day. I just took my jacket off to try to mix this up a little bit. But in the first video, we talked about serious bodily injury and bodily injury.
[00:00:34.01] Simple assault is much easier to understand in Pennsylvania because we’re just dealing with bodily injury. Okay, so first part of the statute deals with attempting to cause, or you did cause bodily injury. So using another example, I smack the hell out of somebody. I’m in a fight. I punch somebody.
[00:00:51.12] I kick someone in the head. I’m in a fight. Basically, kind of your fight statute. It’s kind of a charge I see all the time, especially in domestics with women and men fighting each other, going both ways. Simple salts are very, very common charge in Pennsylvania.
[00:01:08.18] Misdemeanor, second degree. Then what you have is simple assault for trying to scare the mess out of someone who’s not a protected class like aggravated assault, but just. Just a normal fellow walking down the street. If someone were to pull a gun out and point it at their face, scaring the living crap out of somebody, that also is simple assault, misdemeanor, second degree. Then we also have something where you’re dealing with a deadly weapon.
[00:01:31.26] Unlike the aggravated assault, where you’re attempting to cause injury, we’re dealing with negligent injury with the deadly weapon. So now I have two knives, thanks to my assistants, Kayla and Kaylee. But if I took these knives and I started juggling them around because I wanted to be an idiot and accidentally, a knife comes down and hits the person next to me, me in the leg. I negligently caused them bodily injury while using a deadly weapon. That’s also a misdemeanor in a second degree.
[00:02:01.17] And then we also have something that you hear often. You see this on tv all the time. Officers will ask someone, do you have a needle in your pocket? Do you have anything that will poke me? And if you’re wondering why they ask that question is because if that officer gets poked with a needle, of course it’s very dangerous for that person.
[00:02:18.11] But it also is a simple assault for not disclosing that or allowing a needle to poke an officer. Then we get to my favorite part of the statue, probably, which is mutual combat. So in Pennsylvania, we have something says mutual combat, which is actually sounds like some sort of gladiator warrior situation, but in Pennsylvania, are not allowed to fight each other. So if you have two people that say, I want to fight you, and he says, I want to fight you, and let’s say, let’s go outside, like fight club with Brad Pitt, and you go outside and you start fighting each other, and the police come. Believe it or not, that simple saw in Pennsylvania.
[00:02:57.05] But it’s mutual combat, which is misdemeanor in a third degree instead of second degree. So mutual combat is something that gets argued a lot if you think there’s a situation where two people kind of agreed to fight each other, but one called the police before the other one did and the other one got charged, the other one didn’t. So that simple assault. Previous video was aggravated assault, both under title 18 in Pennsylvania.
[00:03:19.05] I’m Media, PA criminal defense attorney Enrique Latoison, you’re a three-minute lawyer. Thank you.
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