Legal News

Assault With a Dangerous Weapon? Nope, Just Teeth

By Ashby Jones

Should biting someone during a fight elevate an assault charge from second degree to first degree?

An Oregon appellate court on Wednesday answered that question in the negative, ruling that a man’s teeth, which inflicted serious damage on his opponent during a drunken brawl, can not be considered a dangerous weapon.

The backstory, according to this story in the Oregonian: During a 2008 fight between two men, 30-year-old Scott Russell Kuperus II “clamped down and took a chunk out of his opponent’s lower ear.”

Kuperus was arrested and convicted on both first-degree and second-degree assault charges and sentenced to over seven years in prison.

On appeal, his lawyer argued the first-degree assault charge was wrong.

The Court of Appeals agreed, finding that first-degree assault requires use of a dangerous weapon. Oregon law defines a dangerous weapon as: “Any weapon, device, instrument, material or substance which under the circumstances in which it is used, attempted to be used or threatened to be used, is readily capable of causing death or serious physical injury.”

The court allowed the second-degree assault conviction to stand, noting that victim sustained a “serious and protracted disfigurement.”

Tony Green, spokesman for the State Department of Justice, said no decision has yet been made on whether to appeal the ruling.

According to the story, Kuperus’s sentence will fall by about 20 months.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2011 (boomark / email).