Assault and battery in Florida

01 Quick answers

What is the difference between assault and battery?

Assault is a threat by word or act that creates a well-founded fear of imminent violence. Battery is actually touching or striking someone against their will.

Does battery require an injury?

No. An intentional unwanted touch is enough. Injury is what can make it aggravated, not what makes it a battery.

What makes assault aggravated?

A deadly weapon without intent to kill, or an intent to commit a felony. It becomes a third-degree felony. Fla. Stat. § 784.021.

What makes battery aggravated?

Great bodily harm, permanent disability or disfigurement, use of a deadly weapon, or the victim being pregnant where the offender knew. § 784.045.

Does a second battery matter?

Yes. A person with a prior battery conviction who commits another can be charged with felony battery rather than a misdemeanor.

How does self-defense work?

At a pretrial immunity hearing, once a defendant makes a prima facie claim, the State must overcome it by clear and convincing evidence. § 776.032(4).

02 The four charges

Assault, battery, and their aggravated forms

Assault under § 784.011 is an intentional and unlawful threat, by word or act, to do violence, coupled with an apparent ability to do it, creating a well-founded fear that it is imminent. Nobody is touched. It is a second-degree misdemeanor.

Aggravated assault under § 784.021 is the same thing with a deadly weapon and no intent to kill, or with an intent to commit a felony. A third-degree felony.

Battery under § 784.03 is actually and intentionally touching or striking someone against their will, or intentionally causing bodily harm. No injury is required. A shove, a grab, a thrown drink — all are battery. A first-degree misdemeanor, and a felony where the person has a prior battery conviction.

Aggravated battery under § 784.045 is battery that intentionally causes great bodily harm, permanent disability or permanent disfigurement, or that uses a deadly weapon, or where the victim was pregnant and the offender knew. A second-degree felony.

The status of the person touched can raise the charge on its own — a law enforcement officer, a firefighter, an emergency medical provider, a person aged sixty-five or older. Those are separate enhancements and they apply regardless of how minor the contact was.

No injury is required for battery. A shove is a battery; what the injury changes is whether it is aggravated.

03 Self-defense

The pretrial hearing where the State carries the burden

Florida’s justifiable use of force law does something unusual, and it is the most valuable thing on this page.

Section 776.012 permits the use of force where a person reasonably believes it necessary to defend against another’s imminent use of unlawful force, with no duty to retreat where they have a right to be.

Section 776.032 goes further and grants immunity from prosecution, not merely a defense at trial. That immunity is raised at a pretrial hearing, and under § 776.032(4), once a defendant makes a prima facie claim of self-defense immunity, the burden is on the State to overcome it by clear and convincing evidence.

That is a real procedural advantage and it is unlike almost anything else in criminal practice, where the defense carries pretrial burdens. It means a case can end before a jury is ever selected, and it means the evidence that supports the claim — video, witnesses, injuries on both people, what preceded the contact — has to be gathered early enough to be presented at that hearing.

It also means the first account matters. A statement at the scene that omits a threat, or that describes the contact as retaliation rather than defense, undercuts the claim before anybody files anything.

04 What is contested

What these cases actually turn on

Who was the aggressor. Most of these cases are a disputed account of a short, chaotic event. The evidence that resolves it is rarely the testimony — it is video, the sequence of calls, injuries on both parties, and what witnesses said before anyone had time to think about it.

Intent. Battery requires an intentional touch. Contact in a crowd, in a scuffle being broken up, or while pulling away from someone has a genuine argument behind it.

What a deadly weapon is. The term is not limited to firearms and knives, and whether a particular object qualifies depends on how it was used. Whether an object was a weapon or a thing someone was holding is frequently the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony.

Injury. Great bodily harm is more than minor injury, and the line is a question of evidence. Medical records and photographs taken on the day decide it far more often than descriptions do.

05 What follows

Consequences that run past the sentence

Where the parties are family or household members, the case is a domestic violence case, with its own no-contact order, its own mandatory terms, and a federal firearms prohibition on conviction that never expires.

The record. Sealing requires a withheld adjudication. A conviction forecloses it, and a second battery conviction also converts a future misdemeanor into a felony, so a plea here reaches forward into cases that have not happened.

Immigration. Whether an assault or battery is a crime involving moral turpitude or a crime of violence turns on the specific statute and the sentence, not on the everyday name of the offense. The consequence attaches at the plea, and the statute of conviction can matter more than the length of probation.

Employment and licensing. Professional licenses and jobs involving vulnerable populations treat these offenses seriously, and reporting obligations frequently have their own deadlines independent of the court case.