Re: UMaine: No Cure for the Summertime Blues but to BEAR the Months 'till October!
you do not engage because you have no ability to formulate a cogent thought regarding the criminal justice system and WHY Lomberg was charged with a misdemeanor IF what the BDN reported was correct.
and your misuse of "tin foil hat" as an insult is kinda sad. you have no idea who I am and what I know and how I learned it. You disagree with me because you choose to believe what you want to believe. (Hamilton/posse, e.g.)
I believe what I was told by Hamilton's teammates, who would have no reason to paint him in a worse light than reality would paint him in. And what they told me was exactly what a baseball player who was present told me. There was no dispute over Hamilton's actions or his motives.
Regardless, I will respond to your "interpretations" of Maine's Criminal Code. Interpretations is in scare quotes because I don't believe you have actually read the law. In Maine, "Assault" is a Class D crime, Title 17-A, S. 206. "A person is guilty of assault if: The person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person." What you are referring to as felony assault is, in Maine, actually termed "Aggravated Assault," a Class B crime, Title 17-A, S. 208. "A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes: Serious bodily injury to another(.)"
Now, let's investigate the differences between those two laws and compare them to your analyses. Both contain the same state of mind from the assailant: intentionally, knowingly, recklessly. So what the assailant was thinking doesn't matter in distinguishing between a misdemeanor and a felony. Both also fail to distinguish between the action that causes bodily injury. The only disparity between the two statutes is the term "serious."
Therefore, under Maine law, HOW you commit assault doesn't matter (*I will note here that assault with a dangerous weapon, and assault manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life are alternate avenues to an aggravated assault charge, but no one is alleging either happened here). I could use your head as a trampoline, and if you are no worse for the wear, it is simple assault. Alternatively, I could knock you over with a feather, and if you break your neck it could be aggravated assault.
In your analysis, you are focused on the actions of the assailant, Lomberg. Your contention is that kicking someone in the head is a serious way to assault someone, and therefore must be aggravated assault. However, Lomberg's actions are not the distinguishing factor between a misdemeanor and a felony. The victim's injuries are. Here, we have an apparent broken nose and concussion. Now, I am not a Maine criminal lawyer, so I can't tell you what the threshold is for an injury, but it seems that for whatever reason the DA's office has not determined that the victim's injuries were enough to cross the boundary from "bodily injury" to "serious bodily injury." The word "serious" could mean different things to different people, and spending time convincing the jury that these injuries are serious could have been considered not an ideal use of limited prosecutorial resources.
