Assaulting someone while intoxicated exposes you to criminal charges that can range from a six-month misdemeanor to twenty years in federal prison, a separate civil lawsuit from the victim, and a stack of collateral consequences touching firearms, employment, and immigration status. Being drunk or high at the time is rarely a defense, and in many situations prosecutors treat the choice to drink before violence as evidence of recklessness that supports a heavier charge.
Does Being Drunk Count as a Defense
For almost every assault charge, no. The law treats voluntary intoxication, meaning you knowingly drank or took drugs, as a condition you chose, and it holds you responsible for what you did in that state. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed in Montana v. Egelhoff that states can prohibit defendants from even raising voluntary intoxication as a defense, noting that the common law firmly rejected intoxication as an excuse or justification for criminal conduct.1Legal Information Institute. Montana v. Egelhoff
There is a narrow opening for charges that require a specific intent, like assault with intent to kill. A defendant can sometimes argue that extreme intoxication made it impossible to form that particular intent. Winning on that argument doesn’t produce an acquittal. It usually drops the conviction to a lesser general-intent offense, so you still get convicted of assault.
Involuntary intoxication is treated differently. If someone slipped a drug into your drink, or a prescribed medication caused an unexpected reaction that genuinely impaired your judgment, you weren’t at fault for the condition itself. That can be a complete defense, but the bar is high: you have to show with clear evidence that the intoxication was truly involuntary and that it prevented you from understanding what you were doing or that it was wrong.
What You Can Be Charged With
Three things drive the charge: how badly the victim was injured, whether a weapon was involved, and who the victim was.
Misdemeanor Assault
Simple assault is the baseline charge and typically a misdemeanor. It covers minor injury or situations where the victim reasonably feared immediate harm. Under the federal statute that applies on federal property and military installations, simple assault carries up to six months in prison, or up to one year if the victim is under sixteen. Assault by striking, beating, or wounding also carries up to a year.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 113 – Assaults Within Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction A physical threat alone can be enough, with no actual contact required.
Felony Assault
Several factors push a charge into felony territory. Assault resulting in serious bodily injury is a felony carrying up to ten years in federal prison.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 113 – Assaults Within Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction Courts define serious bodily injury as harm involving a substantial risk of death, extreme physical pain, lasting disfigurement, or prolonged impairment of a body part or organ.3United States Courts. 18 USC 113(a)(6) – Assault Resulting in Serious Bodily Injury
Using a dangerous weapon with intent to do bodily harm is another ten-year felony. The most severe federal charge, assault with intent to commit murder, carries up to twenty years.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 113 – Assaults Within Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction Assaulting a law enforcement officer, firefighter, or child often triggers enhanced penalties on top of the base charge. And a prosecutor may argue that choosing to drink heavily before engaging in violence demonstrates the kind of recklessness that supports a more serious count.
Domestic Violence
If the victim is a spouse, intimate partner, dating partner, or child under sixteen, separate domestic violence provisions kick in. Assault causing substantial bodily injury to such a person carries up to five years in federal prison. Strangulation or suffocation of a domestic victim carries up to ten.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 113 – Assaults Within Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction A domestic violence conviction also triggers a lifetime federal firearms ban, discussed below, even when the conviction is a misdemeanor and the sentence is probation.
Sentences and Mandatory Treatment
A misdemeanor assault sentence usually combines fines, jail time of up to a year, and a term of probation. Probation conditions typically require regular check-ins, maintaining employment, and staying away from the victim.
Felony sentences get much heavier. Federal prison terms run from five years for assault causing substantial injury to a domestic partner up to twenty for assault with intent to murder.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 113 – Assaults Within Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction State penalties can be steeper. Courts also commonly order restitution covering the victim’s medical bills, lost wages, and damaged property, paid directly to the victim rather than to the government.
When alcohol or drugs were part of the offense, substance abuse conditions are near-automatic. Federal courts have explicit authority to order a defendant to abstain from alcohol entirely and submit to testing, and tampering with testing is separately prohibited. The defendant is also expected to pay for testing and treatment to the extent they can afford it.4United States Courts. Chapter 3 – Substance Abuse Treatment, Testing, and Abstinence Anger management is another standard requirement. These aren’t optional. Drinking, missing a test, or skipping treatment while on supervision can send you back in front of a judge and into custody for the remaining term.
What Happens Right After Arrest
The sequence is predictable. You’re taken into custody, booked, and held until a bail or bond hearing. At that hearing a judge sets conditions of release, and for assault cases involving intoxication those conditions usually go well beyond posting money.
Judges commonly impose no-contact orders prohibiting you from approaching or communicating with the victim in any way. Violating one is a separate criminal offense and grounds for immediate re-arrest. In domestic cases, many jurisdictions issue a protective order automatically at arraignment.
Pretrial release is often conditioned on alcohol abstinence with random testing. Where driving was involved, the court may require an ignition interlock on any vehicle you operate. These conditions apply the whole time the case is pending, which can run for months.
The Victim’s Civil Lawsuit
Criminal prosecution is the government’s case. The victim has a completely separate right to sue you in civil court for money, and they don’t need a criminal conviction to win. The civil standard, preponderance of the evidence, is lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is a conviction, the victim can use it as evidence in the civil case.
Compensatory damages cover what the victim actually lost: medical expenses, lost wages, property damage, plus non-economic losses like pain, suffering, and emotional distress. In serious injury cases those non-economic damages often make up the biggest piece of the award.
On top of compensatory damages, courts frequently award punitive damages in intoxicated assault cases. Punitive damages exist to punish reckless or intentional misconduct, and there’s no fixed federal cap. The recklessness element is essentially built into the facts of a drunken attack, so exposure can run well above the victim’s actual losses.
Don’t count on insurance. Standard homeowners and renters liability policies contain an intentional act exclusion that bars coverage for bodily injury expected or intended by the insured, or reasonably expected to result from criminal conduct. Narrow exceptions exist in some jurisdictions where the defendant intended only minor contact but caused unexpectedly severe harm, but you can’t rely on that. A civil judgment for an intoxicated assault generally comes out of your own pocket.
Victims can’t sit on the claim forever. Most states give between one and six years from the date of the incident to file an assault and battery suit, with two to four years being typical. After that the claim is barred.
Losing Your Firearms
A felony conviction for assault ends your right to possess firearms under federal law. The ban applies to anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment, which covers virtually all felony assault charges. Possessing a firearm or ammunition after conviction is itself a federal felony.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts The prohibition stays in place unless the conviction is expunged, pardoned, or civil rights are formally restored.6Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Most Frequently Asked Firearms Questions and Answers
The Lautenberg Amendment extends the same ban to anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.7U.S. Marshals Service. Lautenberg Amendment This catches people off guard. A domestic assault that resolves with no jail time, just probation, still permanently strips firearm rights under federal law.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts For anyone who owns firearms or works in a field that requires them, that single consequence can hit harder than the sentence.
If You’re Not a U.S. Citizen
Immigration consequences run on a separate track and often don’t match the severity of the underlying crime. An assault conviction may be classified as a crime involving moral turpitude, which is a ground for both inadmissibility and deportation. A non-citizen convicted of such a crime within five years of admission who receives a sentence of a year or more is deportable.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1227 – Deportable Aliens Even short of deportation, the conviction can block re-entry at the border or deny a visa. There’s a narrow exception for a single offense where the maximum possible penalty didn’t exceed one year and the actual sentence was no more than six months.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1182 – Inadmissible Aliens
A felony assault conviction with a year or more imposed can qualify as an aggravated felony under immigration law if it’s a crime of violence.10Legal Information Institute. 8 USC 1101(a)(43) – Aggravated Felony Definition That triggers mandatory deportation with almost no relief, regardless of how long the person has lived in the United States. Canadian border authorities evaluate U.S. convictions under Canadian law, and an assault involving violence can make a person inadmissible to Canada for life.
The Record and What It Does to Your Life
An assault conviction creates a permanent criminal record that shows up on background checks. Healthcare, education, law enforcement, financial services, and any job requiring a professional license are fields where a violent-crime conviction is routinely disqualifying. Most other employers run background checks too, and a hiring manager rarely overlooks a violent offense committed while intoxicated.
Whether you can clean the record depends on where you were convicted and what you were convicted of. Some states allow expungement or sealing of misdemeanor assault after a waiting period, typically two to five years following completion of the sentence. Felony assault is much harder. Many states exclude violent felonies, offenses causing serious bodily injury, or any crime involving a weapon from expungement eligibility. A handful of states allow no felony expungement at all.
Even when expungement is granted, it isn’t a full erasure. Federal background checks, immigration proceedings, and some professional licensing applications may still require disclosure. And the conviction remains available for sentencing enhancement if you commit another offense later.