FELONY MALICIOUS WOUNDING AND FELONY UNLAWFUL WOUNDING
The Maiming Statute – Virginia Code § 18.2-51 – states: If any person maliciously shoot, stab, cut, or wound any person or by any means cause him bodily injury, with the intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill, he shall, except where it is otherwise provided, be guilty of a Class 3 felony.” This crime is punishable by up to 20 years in jail, with a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence, and up to a $100,000 fine. If such act be done unlawfully but not maliciously, with the intent aforesaid, the offender shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony. This is punished by up to 5 years in prison, with up to a $2,500 fine.
Malicious wounding must be proven by the government as follows: 1) Intended to maliciously wound, injure, cut, stab, shoot someone with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or kill that person, and 2) committed a direct but ineffectual act towards this purpose.
The accused can cause this injury with his hands and knees as much as with a knife, machete or sharp jewelry. “Any means” under this section includes using your dog or pit bull to inflict the injuries.
Malice is defined generally as the ill will to do something, or an intentional and wrongful act without legal justification. A wound is defined in Virginia as a breaking of the skin. (If you see blood in a fight, skin has been broken.) An injury in Virginia is defined as internal or organ damage.
There is no requirement of severe injury or disfigurement. To have the requisite intent under this law, the accused must have intended to inflict a permanent wound. It is not required that the wound be in fact permanent, or even severe, but only that the accused intended to cause such harm. If the wound was in fact permanent, disfiguring, or severe, the accused would be charged under Virginia Code Section 18.2-51.2, the Aggravated Malicious Wounding statute. Aggravated Malicious Wounding is punished as a class 2 felony, by up to life in prison, and have a minimum prison sentence of 20 years, with a fine of up to $100,000. (This is the same penalty as a murder charge!)
Intent may be inferred from acts or words the accused used during and prior to the fight. But, intent can also be inferred from the final act when the intentional act could reasonably lead to a wounding injury. There is a presumption in the law that the natural and necessary consequences of an act were intended by the accused when he carried out the act.
Of course using weapons or a dog easily triggers the inferred intent as described above. Using fists, however, is a different story. The only way that punching someone with your fists can lead to an inference of intent for one of the results described in the statute is if the beating is so violent or brutal that it can reasonably be concluded that the accused had such intent. Thus, even if the blows don’t cause disfigurement, if they were carried out with strong violence or brutality, this felony wounding statute would apply. An example of a case where the accused was convicted of malicious wounding for punching someone was in Clark v. Commonwealth, where the accused continued punching the victim after he was down and had to be pulled away by others before he would stopped. The courts look at the severity of the punches and the number of blows.
