I found a very useful content in Queensland Court’s website. You can read it HERE
What is Grievous Bodily Harm and Common Assault
Assault
For instance, if you were to threaten someone by holding a pencil and indicating that you would harm them with it, this action could be considered as an assault. Therefore, it’s possible to face charges of assault without physically making contact with the other individual.
Section 348 of Criminal Code states about what is consent.
You might assume that the process works like this: initially, the prosecution must demonstrate that an assault occurred and that it was carried out by the defendant. Subsequently, they must establish that the assault was severe enough to qualify as grievous bodily harm. If you successfully contest the assault charge, you might assume that the defence against the grievous bodily harm charge becomes unnecessary. However, this isn’t accurate. A charge of grievous bodily harm can result in a successful case even if assault charges are absent altogether.
Grievous bodily harm heavily relies on medical evidence, making it challenging to contest. It’s not a straightforward, clear-cut matter. Moreover, the concept isn’t strictly binary. When it comes to grievous bodily harm charges, two potential defences are provocation and self-defence.
In R v BDZ [2023] QCA 59, it was stated –
As was explained in R v Free; Ex parte Attorney-General (Qld) (2020) 4 QR 80, 99 at [55] there is no requirement that a sentencing judge must impose an early parole eligibility date in response to mitigating considerations such as a plea of guilty.
Possible sentence can be upto 14 years and what the above paragraph states is, that there a selection of early parole date is not mandatory. In that case you will have to serve 80% of the sentenced terms before the person can be eligible for parole.
Possible Defence to Assault Charges
The most common defence to assault charges is denying that you have ever did any act which would constitute an Assault. If you believe that there are no proof which means it is not possible to find you guilty, that could be a wrong expectation.
The other common defence is provocation. Section 269 of Criminal Code states,
269 Defence of provocation
(1) A person is not criminally responsible for an assault committed upon a person who gives the person provocation for the assault, if the person is in fact deprived by the provocation of the power of self-control, and acts upon it on the sudden and before there is time for the person’s passion to cool, and if the force used is not disproportionate to the provocation and is not intended, and is not such as is likely, to cause death or grievous bodily harm.
(2) Whether any particular act or insult is such as to be likely to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control and to induce the ordinary person to assault the person by whom the act or insult is done or offered, and whether, in any particular case, the person provoked was actually deprived by the provocation of the power of self-control, and whether any force used is or is not disproportionate to the provocation, are questions of fact.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the burden of proving provocation falls on the defendant. If you’re facing an assault charge and believe that you were provoked, it becomes your responsibility to provide evidence to support this claim. Demonstrating provocation is not a simple task; it necessitates extensive research into a significant number of case laws to ascertain if your narrative is sufficiently robust to establish a case of provocation.
