Orlando violent crime attorney

If someone even believes he or she is in danger, you can be charged with assault in Florida. If you make actual contact with that person with the intention of hurting him or her or causing pain, your crime becomes one of battery.

You don’t have to cause injury — your touch might even be inadvertent. It’s still battery in the state of Florida. If you have a weapon or firearm in your possession at the time, the charges jump to aggravated assault or aggravated battery, and the penalties become worse.

If you’ve found yourself in this sort of situation recently and you believe you may be charged with an assault or battery charge or both, you need an experienced and aggressive criminal defense attorney to fight for you. If you’ve already been charged, you need help immediately. The state of Florida fiercely prosecutes these crimes and judges are not likely to let you off easily if you don’t have help. This is not something you should handle on your own.

Suppose for a moment that someone has threatened to harm you or your family. Now imagine that late one night, you notice an unidentified individual standing on the street near your home. You believe this person is watching your door. You arm yourself, maybe with your son’s baseball bat. You go outside to confront the individual. You demand that he leave the location immediately. He may or may not have anything to do with the threat against you or your family. If he makes a report to the police, you can find yourself facing aggravated assault charges.

Aggravated assault is one step up in severity from assault. Assault occurs when you attempt or threaten to harm another individual. Aggravated assault means you did it with a weapon, technically, a deadly weapon, in your possession. Something as innocuous as a baseball bat can be considered a deadly weapon when used to inflict injury on another individual. Aggravated assault is a serious charge, one you should not try to face alone.

Aggravated battery is a second degree felony in the state of Florida. Simple battery is a misdemeanor, but several factors can combine to put you at risk for a more serious felony charge. If you had a deadly weapon in your possession at the time you made violent contact with another individual, this enhances your potential conviction into a felony.

You will face a felony charge for aggravated battery if the person you assaulted was pregnant; the prosecution must prove that you had knowledge of or should have realized the victim’s pregnancy.

Lastly, if you hurt someone to intentionally cause disfigurement, disability or grievous injury, Florida will charge you with felony aggravated battery. Without a qualified and experienced criminal defense attorney on your side, you could risk as many as 15 years in prison. You could be fined up to $10,000.

You cannot be charged with aggravated battery if you acted to save yourself or someone else. The attorneys at Katz & Phillips can potentially have the charges against you reduced to a misdemeanor, or we might be able to successfully negotiate with the prosecution so you serve probation rather than jail time.

At a minimum, child abuse is a third degree felony in the state of Florida. It brings to mind thoughts of an adult striking or otherwise physically harming a child, but it does not stop there.

You may be liable for child abuse charges if you cause psychological damage to a child, if you do anything that might potentially lead to the injury of a child, or even if you incite someone else to hurt a child. You can go to jail for up to five years in state prison.

Under some grievous circumstances, child abuse can be a first degree felony. If a child is permanently disfigured or disabled by what occurred, if the child was confined or trapped in some way, if he was intentionally and harshly tortured or punished, you could face as many as 30 years behind bars.

Kidnapping is a first degree felony. That’s almost as bad as it gets, but if the offense you’re being charged with involved a child, the stakes jump exponentially. If the state of Florida also accuses you of issues of child prostitution, exploitation, sexual battery, or abuse, you may lose any opportunity of negotiating for a lesser charge.

You can’t handle this without the very best legal assistance available. Call the experienced and aggressive attorneys at Katz & Phillips as soon as you expect you might have a problem.

The line between murder and manslaughter is thin in Florida. A murder charge means you intentionally took someone’s life, or that an individual died because of some felonious action on your part. Manslaughter is death resulting from negligence and is a second degree felony. An experienced criminal defense attorney can use the facts of your case to make the difference between one charge or the other.

First degree murder is punishable by death in Florida; at the very least, if convicted, you will spend the rest of your life behind bars without possibility of parole. With this much at stake, you need the best, most experienced criminal defense attorney you can find. Even a conviction for manslaughter might remand you to prison for decades. If you are facing serious charges of this magnitude, you need help and you need it immediately.