Aggravated sabotage
- The second alternative to the provision of section 329(a) of the Penal Law deals with an unlawful attempt to inflict disability or mutilation on a person or to cause him serious injury. On the basic level of fact, it is required that an attempt be made to harm a person, but there is no requirement that an actual consequential component be caused, and it is required that the attempt to harm be done by means of a dangerous or other offensive weapon, in the language of the section:
- (A) A person who commits any of the following with the intention of inflicting disability or mutilation on a person, or causing him serious injury, or resisting the lawful arrest or detention of himself or of another, or preventing such arrest or detention, shall be sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment:
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(2) unlawfully attempts to harm a person with a bullet, knife, stone, or other dangerous or offensive weapon;
- In our case, the defendant threw three Molotov cocktails in a residential neighborhood at three residences in the middle of the night. At the time of the Molotov cocktails, the occupants were in the houses and we slept the night (see, inter alia, the statement of one of the neighbors - P/64). One Molotov cocktail fell at the entrance gate to the house, and another Molotov cocktail fell at the entrance to the house, hit a tree, fell to the ground and shattered (Sgt. Louis Salah's action report P/52).
Molotov cocktails could have caused harm to human lives, and miraculously no damage was caused beyond property damage.
In accordance with case law, Molotov cocktails constitute an offensive and lethal weapon for all intents and purposes, the harm of which is bad (Criminal Appeal 9511/01 Kobakov v. State of Israel, 56(2) 687 (2002) (the Kobakov case); Criminal Appeal 2460/15 Jabareen v. State of Israel (04.05.2016) (Jabareen case); Criminal Appeal 3702/14 Anonymous v. State of Israel (September 28, 2014). Hence, the defendant committed an attempted assault with a dangerous weapon as required by the section.
- The mental element required for a conviction for aggravated assault is criminal thought - awareness of the behavior and circumstances, as well as "special intent" to inflict disability or mutilation on a person or to cause him serious injury, i.e., recognition of the actual risk of causing severe bodily injury (Y. Kedmi, On Criminal Law, Part III (2006), pp. 1277-1283).
In accordance with the provision of section 20(c)(1) of the Penal Law and case law, awareness of circumstances can also be proved by means of the rule of turning a blind eye, in the sense that if a defendant suspects the existence of a particular circumstance but refrains from clarifying it, his deliberate disregard of the existence of that circumstance is equivalent to knowledge of it (Y. Kedmi, On Criminal Law, Part One (2012), p. 216).