Articles Posted in Assault

In People v. Tucker, the Appellate Division considered whether there had been sufficient evidence to prove that the defendant had assaulted a police officer in order to prevent him from performing his lawful duty.

In the early morning hours, three police officers responded to a 911 call, but the caller did not give specifics as to the nature of the emergency.  When they arrived at the scene, the police saw a car abandoned in an intersection and a man struggling with a woman over a purse. After the man and woman were separated, believing that a domestic incident had occurred, one of the police officers attempted to question the woman to determine what was happening. The woman appeared to have been crying, but refused to respond to the officer’s questions. Instead, she was focused on what was happening with the male.  The police officer attempted to handcuff her and told her that she was “going to be detained until I can figure out what’s happening here.” The woman struggled, stating that she did not do anything and did not need to be handcuffed. In the process of struggling, she injured two of the officers. She was subsequently charged with two counts of assault in the second degree.

Following a jury trial, the defendant was convicted of one count of assault in the second degree and sentenced to two years in prison, to be followed by three years of postrelease supervision.  She appealed. The defendant maintained that the prosecutor failed to prove that the police officer who attempted to detain and handcuff her was performing a lawful duty at the time when she assaulted him.  

In a possession of a controlled substance case, the court considered whether the police officers properly stopped and arrested the defendant for disorderly conduct.  When the officers stopped the defendant, they found cocaine on his person, leading to a charge of possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.

The events that eventually led to the defendant’s conviction on a drug charge started when the three police officers who were on patrol in an unmarked car observed the defendant running down a sidewalk and across a street into oncoming traffic. A couple of cars had to slow down as the defendant ran across the street in front of them. The officers decided to issue the defendant a summons for disorderly conduct because he ran across the street disrupting traffic.  In other words, by running across the street into traffic, the police officers had concluded that the had reasonable cause to believe that the defendant was committed the crime of disorderly conduct.  However, when they approached the defendant, they observed him clutching something in his waistband and feared that he had a weapon.  The officers ordered the defendant to put his hands in the air, handcuffed him, and searched him. They discovered a knife in the defendant’s pocket along with 5 clear bags of cocaine.  The defendant was eventually convicted of attempted possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.

Under N.Y. Pen. Code § 240.20[5], a person is guilty of disorderly conduct when, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof he obstructs vehicular or pedestrian traffic. For the police to have found that there was reasonable or probable cause to stop and arrest the defendant, his actions must have led them to believe that the defendant was intentionally or recklessly creating a substantial risk that public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm would occur. The court found that merely causing 2 cars to momentarily slow down did not amount to disorderly conduct, but was only a momentary inconvenience at best.  This was not sufficient to satisfy the public inconvenience or annoyance element.

Two cases were brought before the court for resolution.

On the first case:

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The defendant was arrested and subsequently arraigned on a charge of assault in the third degree in violation of Penal Law § 120.00 (1). The People moved in line for a ruling allowing them to call an expert witness on domestic violence to testify on their direct case regarding the “battered woman syndrome” (hereinafter referred to as BWS). The complainant and the defendant dated periodically for a period of time encompassing the past 13 years. The instant charge stems from August 25, 2003, when the defendant is alleged to have picked up the complainant, thrown her over a couch, pushed her to the ground, and stomped on her groin, thereby causing her to allegedly suffer bruised ribs and a fractured coccyx. In support of their application, a Lawyer said that, the People detail the complainant’s allegations of physical and psychological abuse by the defendant over a prolonged period of time. Included are a litany of alleged violent acts directed at her by the defendant, from 1991 to 2003. The alleged violence included threatening to kill the complainant on numerous occasions, repeatedly beating her, urinating on her, various acts of forcible sex abuse, and constant berating of her. Although these acts occurred over a period of 13 years, except for brief sporadic periods of separateness, the complainant did not leave the defendant nor immediately seek protection from the police. All of the prior alleged violent acts were also the subject of the People’s Molineux application, which was separately decided.

A Nassau Sex Crime Lawyer said that, the charges contained in the criminal complaint before this court allegedly occurred on August 25, 2003. The complainant did not report the alleged crime to the police on August 25, 2003. On October 19, 2003, after other alleged incidents, the complainant reported this charge to the police along with four additional charges. Thereafter, the defendant was arrested for the above-listed crimes.

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The Kings County Court on July 22, 1958, was called upon to evaluate two separate cases that involved requests for specific information from protected patient records in a hospital. The court was asked to determine if the cases warranted the release of the medical records, or if the cases were not eligible to request the records because the records were protected by the doctor/patient privilege. In order to determine the necessity for the release of these documents, the court had to look at the specifics involved in each case.

The first case involved a man who had brutally beaten another man in a fight. The fight occurred in Kings County and left the injured man in a condition so serious that he had to be hospitalized. The hospitalization lasted for several weeks. During this time, the man was exposed to a bacteria in the hospital that caused him to suffer from infection. The infection turned into sepsis. The man ultimately died from the sepsis from the bacteria that he was exposed to in the hospital. The man’s assailant was charged with manslaughter for causing the death of his victim. His defense team challenged the indictment based on the fact that the injuries that the man sustained were not the proximate cause of the man’s death. His death was caused by bacteria that he was exposed to while he was hospitalized. The defense contends that they should be allowed access to the victims personal medical records so that they can prove their case at trial.

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In 1958, a man was involved in a vicious fight with another man. It ended with the assailant pummeling the second man to the point where he was hospitalized. Some days following his admittance into the hospital, the man victim died. The assailant was charged with homicide for the death of the victim. However, the assailant’s defense team posed the issue that the assailant had not actually caused the death of the victim. They contended that the victim had died of natural causes as the result of medical malpractice at the hospital. Their contention being that the assailant could not be charged with any crime more serious than assault because the assault did not directly lead to the death of the victim.

The courts found that this was a compelling argument. Oddly, it was not the first time that an argument of this nature had been presented to the courts in a case of a physical assault. The courts looked back at case law in an attempt to determine how to assess the validity of the claim that was presented in this case. They discovered a case of a woman named Lemon who had poisoned her husband. He was hospitalized because of the poison that she had given him in an attempt to kill him when he died of complications several weeks later. Her defense was that the poison had not killed her husband, he had died as a result of medical malpractice at the hospital and that it was entirely beyond her control. Her contention being that she could not be charged with killing him if the doctors were the ones who actually caused his death. The courts in that case found that the man had died as a direct result of her actions in poisoning him. They determined that if she had not poisoned him, he would not have been in the hospital. If he had not been in the hospital, the doctor’s would not have treated him incorrectly. If the doctors had not treated him incorrectly, he would not have died. Therefore, the courts in that case determined that the woman had been the direct cause of the actions that transpired that culminated in the death of her husband. This created a framework for the justices in the current case to evaluate the necessary elements that would indicate that the crime was or was not a direct cause of the person’s death.

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In May of 2001, the defendant allegedly assaulted a woman because she had helped police with a drug investigation that involved the defendant’s brother. The investigation was multicounty in the scope and revealed a distribution network that implicated the defendant’s brother. The Attorney General’s Organized Crime Task Force appointed a District Attorney from another county who was the Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the task force as an Assistant District Attorney for this case. The defendant was charged with intimidating a witness in the second degree and assault in the third degree. The District Attorney from the other county presented the case to the Grand Jury and obtained the indictments.

The defendant moved to dismiss the indictments saying that the District Attorney from the other county was not a person authorized to present the case or to obtain indictments. The County Court dismissed the indictments in agreement with her. The State appealed the decision.

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On the night of October 3, 2004, a New York woman was approached by her roommate. He told her that he had gone in to her purse and taken five dollars, but that he had later returned it. She became upset. They had been lovers in the past and when he was desperate for a place to stay, she had allowed him to live in her spare bedroom, platonically. She did not; however, want him to start feeling so “at home” that he did not think anything about going through her personal items like her purse and taking whatever he wants from her. She knew the problems that she could have with him in that regard. After all, they have known each other for a long time. She told him that he had crossed over the line and needed to move out.

He became furious. He physically assaulted her, strangling her first with a scarf and then a black leather belt. He told her that he was going to kill her. She managed to get away and called the police emergency number. He ran away. As soon as he was gone the woman packed up his property and took them over to his brother’s house. When she returned, the police were at her apartment. When they entered, they found the male subject hiding in a corner of her apartment waiting for her to return. He was arrested and she was taken to the hospital for treatment for her injuries.

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