WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW IF CHARGED WITH DOMESTIC BATTERY?
How Is Domestic Battery Defined Under Kansas Law? When you look at the domestic battery statute, it is long and difficult to understand. What it really comes down to is that a person can be found guilty or convicted of domestic battery if there is an unprivileged or unwanted touching between household members or a romantic couple if done in a rude, angry or insulting manner. It is a quite a bit different than most people think.
Most people think that for a domestic battery, there is going to be someone with physical bodily injuries, such as a black eye or somebody got pushed down and was injured. For a regular standard domestic battery, this is not what usually happens. People get into an argument, someone calls the cops, and a person makes the mistake of admitting there was physical contact because they think they have not done anything wrong. In most cases, all it takes is a touch. It can be as simple as putting a finger on your wife, your husband, your significant other in a fight, and just one finger can get you arrested and facing a dometic battery charge.
How Serious Is A Domestic Battery Charge Taken In Kansas? Domestic battery in Kansas is no joke. It carries with it ancillary consequences besides just having to go to court and deal with a possible conviction, probation or being put in jail. There are other collateral consequences that impact your rights to carry or have a firearm. It also carries with it the negative stigma associated with domestic battery. Ninety-five percent of the people that contact an attorney after being charged with domestic battery have no idea that what they did was a domestic battery. Most people are under the mistaken impression that there needs to be some sort of physical harm, a bloody nose, someone with a black eye, something like that. However, that is not the case.
When someone comes in with charges of domestic battery, usually, it is the person’s first offense for any type of crime. They are just getting ready to go down the rabbit hole of finding out how much trouble they are in.
A first time domestic battery charge is simply going to be a Class B misdemeanor. That does not sound like a big deal. However, because there is so much negative stigma associated with domestic battery, and it has ancillary consequences of losing constitutional rights, every time there is domestic battery allegation and someone gets arrested it’s a big deal. When a person gets arrested for domestic battery, they may spend the night in jail before they can get in front of a judge, and most people are not used to being thrown in jail.
After that, when they go in front of a judge, there is a state statute that prohibits the parties from having contact for seventy-two hours. When this happens the defendant will have a couple of days of not being able to even contact their spouse. In theory, the idea of no contact sounds good. This gives the parties time to cool down. When they take that into the real world, people have bills they have to pay. They have work they have to go to; they have kids they have to deal with. They have all these things they have to do as a team that all of a sudden weighs on one person and the other person cannot reach out to help.All of a sudden, it is on one party to do everything and they cannot even contact the other party to split things up or to even communicate, “You get the kids this day and I’ll get the kids tomorrow.”
Since the defendant is going to be barred from contact, they are going to be barred from staying at the marital residence for that first seventy-two hours. This basically means they are homeless. When someone gets arrested, they never get arrested with their wallet, keys and everything ready to go. This means that when they get out of jail, they are in this huge problem because they have seventy-two hours where they cannot go home. Usually, the person will be out on bond. They will have to try to deal with that alone. They cannot talk to their most important partner in helping them, and they are trying to get hold of family or friends to bond them out. Then a person that is charged with domestic battery, they are going to be under bond conditions with possibly bond supervision. That means they basically have to be on probation while they are on bond. They are not going to be able to drink, they are not going to be able to have guns and they are not going to be able to stay at their regular residence for at least those seventy-two hours.
A lot of times, the judge will order just a straight no contact between the parties for an indefinite period of time. This means they might be going from talking to their wife everyday to not at all and then dealing with not talking to kids for a month or two. Imagine what that does to their entire world. Therefore, although everything seems simple, what seems to be a Class B misdemeanor, it really blows up a defendant's world wheneveraccused of domestic battery.