Infliction of injury is a crime of domestic violence in California and takes place when an individual willfully inflicts even the slightest injury upon his or her intimate partner. With respect to the GLBT community, intimate partners are civilly united or formerly civilly united, have children together and are living together or were once living together. If convicted of this crime, the defendant faces a felony, punishable by up to four years in prison and a maximum fine of $6,000.

Every crime has specific “elements” or facts that the prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt in order to obtain a conviction against the defendant. Each element of the charge must be independently proven or else the jury must vote “not guilty.” In order to find the accused guilty of infliction of injury, the prosecutor must prove three elements.

The first element in an infliction of injury charge is that the defendant inflicted bodily injury upon his or her intimate partner. This means that the “victim’s” injury resulted from direct force applied by the accused. It doesn’t matter how slight the force was, only that some amount of force was used.

The second element that must be proven is that the infliction of injury was willful. “Willful” means that the individual had the willingness to inflict force. Willingness has nothing to do with the amount of force used or the physical result of the force, it only deals with the willingness to simply do the act. In a situation where the accused willfully used the force in self-defense or in the defense of others, he or she is not guilty of this crime. It is the prosecutor’s burden to prove that the willful force was unlawful and not for one of the reasons stated above.

The final element in an infliction of injury charge is that the injury resulted in a “traumatic condition.” A traumatic condition means that the accused partner’s force caused an external or internal injury to his or her partner. The injury could be minor or serious. Basically, this means that any injury, no matter how slight, that wasn’t there before the defendant applied the force to his or her partner’s body will qualify.

In order to convict a criminal defendant on any charge, the prosecutor must prove each and every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In addition, a criminal conviction requires that all twelve members of the jury must be convinced that the charges are true. That means that if just one juror isn’t completely convinced of the defendant’s guilt, the jury cannot return a conviction. An experienced criminal defense lawyer will aggressively defend the accused partner’s rights and sow reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

An infliction of injury conviction is no joke. An accusation can be devastating, and a conviction carries severe penalties. To best avoid these consequences, it is imperative that an accused hires a skilled attorney who knows the most effective ways to refute this crime’s elements. In addition, a LGBT defendant should hire an attorney who not only specializes in California crimes of intimate partner abuse but who also understands that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, unfortunately, don’t receive the same treatment under our legal system that their “straight” counterparts do and knows how to ensure that his or her client receives fair treatment despite this fact. In order to secure the best representation from a firm who has successfully defended countless domestic abuse cases, contact the gay friendly attorneys at the Kavinoky Law Firm today for a free consultation.