Assault in the first degree
Applied in 86 court decisions — leading case Commonwealth v. Burge (1997)
Most recently applied in United States v. Vederoff (February 2019)
Effective: January 1, 1975 History: Created 1974 Ky
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(1) A person is guilty of assault in the first degree when:
(a) He intentionally causes serious physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument; or (b) Under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another and thereby causes serious physical injury to another person.
(2) Assault in the first degree is a Class B felony.
Official source: Kentucky General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Kentucky statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.