What defenses are there to Domestic Violence with Corporal Injury (PC 273.5) in Riverside, California?

Posted in Domestic Violence FAQ'S on May 1, 2014

First and foremost, the prosecutor must prove each and every element of their case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. Typically, Corporal Injury defenses fall into one of three categories:

1. False Allegations
• False allegations are VERY common in domestic violence cases. Because emotions are very high in romantic relationships, people will often do crazy things to hurt or punish the other person…. including tell false stories to the police. In divorce or child custody situations, parties will often make false allegations of domestic violence to gain the upper hand. Even without a pending divorce or custody battle, false domestic abuse allegations are sometimes made to gain control over the other person.
   
  A good defense will attack the credibility of the false accuser and make clear to the prosecutor and Judge (and ultimately the Jury, if the matter goes to trial), the motives to fabricate on the part of the accuser.
2. Accident
• The prosecutor has to prove that the infliction of physical injury was willful and unlawful. True accidents therefore wouldn’t qualify. However, before asserting an accident defense, it’s important to recognize that the accident has to be reasonable and believable to a jury.
   
  Accident is limited as a defense also to those actions that were not intended at all. A good example of an accident would be opening a door and the door hitting someone on the other side that you did not know was there. An example of a case where an “accident” defense would not work is if you threw a shoe in the direction of someone else to scare them but not intending to hit them, and the shoe ends up hitting them.
3. Self-Defense
• Often times Police Officers go into domestic calls with a pre-conceived notion of who the aggressor is “supposed” to be. Even more often, the party responsible for starting the physical altercation will deflect blame and not clearly detail their role as the aggressor or instigator, claiming to be the victim.
   
  In California, you have an absolute right to use physical force to defend yourself, as long as your actions are reasonable under the circumstances. To establish a claim of self defense, you must have reasonably believed that you were in danger of being harmed or touched unlawfully, you must have believed that force was necessary to prevent the harm/touching, and that you used no more force than necessary to prevent that from happening.

If you have questions regarding domestic violence, contact Riverside, California Attorney Graham Donath at 951-667-5293. Let him answer your questions.