Technically, a “battery” is the act that involves physical contact, sometimes violent but at least unwanted.
An “assault” is conduct that falls short of actual physical contact but which is either a credible threat of a battery or an attempt to commit a battery. Firing your gun at a person (a particularly appropriate example in Idaho) and striking him can be the basis for a battery charge; pointing it at the person, or firing but missing the target, can be the basis for an assault charge.
Both assault and battery can be either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending upon the circumstances, especially upon the extent or seriousness of the harm that is caused or that reasonably could have been caused.
Defenses usually hinge on facts that bear on whether the defendant’s conduct was willful or intentional or unlawful.
During the past several years, the law has focused special attention on assaults and batteries that occur between family members or household members. Charges are usually labeled as “domestic battery” or “domestic assault.”
Upon a conviction of a form of “domestic violence” the penalties are typically enhanced over what they would have been for the simple, “non-domestic” variety of the offense, even upon a first offense. Worse, the penalties increase exponentially upon a second offense, third offense, etc., along the lines first developed for successive DUI offenses.
Criminal charges of domestic violence can be part of a spiral that includes divorce or child custody litigation on the civil side as well as additional proceedings on the civil side in which one party seeks a domestic violence protection order (or restraining order) against the other. It is common for the same attorney to handle both the criminal and the civil proceedings that arise out of incident at issue. Where two or more lawyers represent the same client who is involved in separate criminal and civil matters, it is important to coordinate the representation so that the strategy for one case (usually the civil case) does not cause a problem for the other (usually the criminal case).