Criminal Liability. On the grounds of a school, Gavin T., a fifteen-year-old student, was eating lunch. He threw a half-eaten apple toward the outside wall of a classroom some distance away. The apple sailed through a slowly closing door and struck a

Question

teacher who was in the room. The teacher was knocked to the floor and lost consciousness for a few minutes. Gavin was charged, in a California state court, with assault by "any means of force likely to produce great bodily injury." The court found that he did not intend to hit the teacher but only intended to see the apple splatter against the outside wall. To send a "message" to his classmates that his actions were wrong, however, the court convicted him of the charge. Should Gavin's conviction be reversed on appeal? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Criminal liability
The state intermediate appellate court vacated the order of the lower court and remanded the case with instructions to dismiss it. The state intermediate appellate court pointed out that under California law, "to be found guilty of a criminal assault, one must have either the intent to batter, hit, strike, or wrongfully touch a victim; or one must have a general criminal intent to do an act which is inherently dangerous to human life—such as firing a cannon at an inhabited castle, or driving an elephant into a crowded judicial conference." The court emphasized that in this case, there was no evidence Gavin intended to strike the teacher with the apple and "all the evidence and circumstances showed the contrary." Gavin's "urge" to see the apple splatter against the wall "may have been juvenile and, therefore, rather appropriate to appellant's age; but it did not constitute a criminal intent to batter the victim or a general criminal intent to act in a manner inherently dangerous to human life."