Is The Threat Of Being Sprayed With Breast Milk Assault? Yes, Yes It Is

No one likes listening to authority.  Whether you’re an 8 year-old being forced by your parents to clean your room or a 38 year-old being forced by your boss to review Excel spreadsheets until the wee hours of the night, no one wants to do what they’re told.  But you know why you have to do it?  Because, like your mommy always told you, because they said so.  And nowhere is this all encompassing authoritative reason better illustrated than when you’re in jail.

Apparently a women from Kentucky (or as they’re known locally, a Kentuckian and not a Kentuckinite as I’ve been saying for years) who was in jail for alcohol intoxication allegedly assaulted a deputy by squirting breast milk in the deputy’s face.

You’re probably thinking, “What?” for a couple of reasons: 1) How was the inmate able to whip her mammary glands without the guards becoming suspicious?  2) Breast milk can go that far?  3) Is spraying breast milk really assault?  And 4) Kentuckian?

The answers: 1) The inmate was changing into her uniform so whipping out said mammary glands wasn’t so unusual. 2) Apparently yes, but who knows how close she was.  3) Yes, more on this later.  And 4) I know, huh?!?

The notion that spraying liquid on someone can be assault may seem a little foreign or (using every lawyer’s favorite word) attenuated.  But in this case it probably seems a little more understandable since it’s a bodily fluid – especially because it’s breast milk.  Though I’m sure many of you can think of a few more disgusting human fluids to toss at someone, human milk is just weird to me.  I mean the whole process of pregnancy, shooting out a baby, and then producing milk just seems too … cow-ish to me. 

Anyway, yes spraying liquid on another person can not only be assault, but you may be surprised that it can also be battery.  Actually the more I think about it, most people who haven’t subjected themselves to the useless study of law will probably be surprised by a lot of the distinctions made in it.

First, to understand why this is a legal issue, a clarification about the difference between assault and battery is in order.  In regular English, the two words are synonyms for each other with no real distinguishable differences.  But in the legal world, assault means the attempt or threat of inflicting harm onto another.  Whereas the battery means when one actually physical harms another person.  The two are treated as two different crimes, meaning assault can occur without battery if the attacker doesn’t actually hurt the victim and even stranger, battery can occur without assault.  The latter situation can occur when a victim gets attacked from behind, the victim doesn’t see the attack coming and therefore cannot perceive the threat of harm and thus the attacker is only guilty of battery.

However, the question here is whether spraying milk on someone can really cause actual harm to them.  Well, maybe in most cases it can’t cause physical harm aside from when it lands on a person who has some sort of rare skin disease that causes them bleed out if lactose touches them.  But seriously, in the criminal law world actual physical harm isn’t as big of an issue.  What matters is the attempt and physical contact itself.  Assault and battery laws are designed to prevent people from freely being able to touch and threaten other people without consequence.  What the law does in most states is typically create different degrees of punishments based on the severity of each assault and battery, usually with the first degree denoting the highest level of severity and so forth.  Hence terms such as first degree assault and third degree battery.

Anyway, the lesson here is an old one: Keep your hands, feet, elbows, breast milk, flying shoes, etc. to yourself.

By: Andrew Dat