What are Penalties for Assault?
The penalties for a Syracuse assault charge depend upon the level of the alleged crime. For a third-degree assault charge, a Class A misdemeanor, the individual faces the possibility of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Second-degree assault comes with more serious penalties, including up to seven years in prison. The highest charge—assault in the first degree—is punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Both second and first degree assault also carry a period of post-release supervision of up to five years.
What is Assault?
State law defines three kinds of assault: assault in the third, second, and first degrees.
For someone to face charges of third-degree assault, they must have caused physical injury to another person in either a reckless or intentional way. This means true accidents are not considered third-degree assault, since the individual neither intentionally harmed the complainant nor did they create an unreasonable risk of harm to any other person. Also, a person may face charges of assault in the third degree if they were criminally negligent while using a deadly weapon and cause physical injury to another person. Assault in the third degree is a misdemeanor in New York.
A second-degree assault charge is a more serious charge that falls into the Class D violent felony category. For a charge to be bumped up to second degree, there must be a serious physical injury because of the alleged attacker’s actions, a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument must be used in the alleged assault, or the alleged victim must have been a government official.
The most serious assault charge, however, is first-degree assault—a Class B violent felony offense . An assault is considered first-degree when serious physical injury is inflicted by way of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument; when the injury involved is a loss of limb, serious and permanent disfigurement, or results in a disability; when the person committing the assault was acting with a depraved indifference to human life and causes serious physical injury or when the assault was committed during another felony and the complainant suffers serious physical injury as a result.
