Lawyer for Assault Third Degree

Assault in the Third Degree is unique under Washington law insofar as the legislature has provided eleven different ways that the offense can be committed.

The most common ways that an Assault 3rd Degree is committed are:

• Assault on a law enforcement officer, fire fighter, or nurse in the performance of their duties
• Negligently causing bodily injury to another person with a weapon of other instrument likely to produce harm
• Assaulting a person attending a court hearing

For information about other levels of this crime, see our assault page.

Assault in the Third Degree is a class C felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The standard range penalty for an individual with no prior criminal history is 1 to 3 months in the county jail. If a defendant is alleged to have been armed with a deadly weapon during the course of the assault, special enhancements can apply. If a person is armed with a firearm an 18 month prison sentence is mandatory. If a person is armed with a knife, an additional penalty of 6 months in jail will apply. At our law firm, we are often called upon to defend someone who is charged with assault of a law enforcement officer. In these instances, a case often comes down to the officer's word against the defendant. The police are capable of exaggeration, and often times an assault on an officer case would have been more accurately charged as resisting arrest or perhaps obstructing a law enforcement officer. Because it often comes down to your word against the word of a police officer, it is important to secure any bodycam footage or the evidence from any nearby surveillance cameras in these sort of cases.

Although this offense often typically involves a law enforcement officer, there are other scenarios that also fall under this law. The offense covers jail staff and can also cover a private citizen who is effecting a citizen's arrest. It is not a legal defense that a person assaulted a police officer due to an unlawful arrest. The law expects an individual to lawfully cooperate with an officer under that scenario and to raise the issue later in a civil suit or complaint.