It's common knowledge that it's only a matter of time before the undead will rise from their cold graves to wreak havoc and begin their murderous rampage against humanity. Hopefully that occurs before all of our technology turns against us and we have to wage war against the very machines that have been making our lives easier. Though my money is on someone nuking everything way before all this happens (I'm looking at you North Korea). Either that or aliens will get us.
What was that? I'm not nuts because I'm obviously joking about everything, except probably the North Korea thing because, well, you know… I'm not crazy enough to think that any of that stuff will actually happen, especially the zombie apocalypse. I mean who's mental enough to think zombies are going to take over the world?
What was that? Really? Huh. In the face you say and he broke his nose!? Hey guys, in case you were too lazy to click on that last link (thereby ruining and completely missing the point of my humorous blogging style – get with it people, I'm immersing you in the story through the magic of new media), a man ordering food in a restaurant in Iowa was apparently punched twice in the face by a man accusing him of being a zombie, resulting in a broken nose for the unfortunate restaurant patron.
Don't bother clicking on the link now, I just told you the whole story. It's too late. You ruined it, but thank you to all who kept up with the link clicking. You guys get a check plus.
Anyway, being immersed in the law as I unfortunately happily am, upon hearing any case of anything happening (especially unauthorized physical contact) I'm cursed blessed with the immediate impulsive reflex to try and analyze the situation from a legal perspective. I need to get new hobbies law books…
This seems like a pretty cut and dry case of assault and battery, both from criminal and civil legal perspective. At least from the news report it seems like the punch was thrown with the intent to cause harm (as evidenced by the broken nose) and that the victim most likely did not consent to it (as evidenced by the victim's attempt to call the police during the attack). Case closed right?
Well, maybe or maybe not. As strange as it might sound, the attacker may have a defense to all of this. He did call the victim a zombie, and I suppose if he really believed him to be one and that was the reason why he punched him in the nose, he might have a defense to lighten his sentence.
There are a lot of different insanity standards that the courts employ nowadays, but the standard most used today is the American Law Institute test. It basically states that a person has an insanity defense if his mental illness made it so that he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or conform his conduct to be in line with the law. This makes the outcome of this case a little bit murkier. It's also why assault cases in general can have some very unpredictable results – as evidenced by the huge number of assault and battery cases received by LegalMatch every year.
Anyway, the lesson here I guess is don't look like/be a zombie.
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