## Facts

- A delinquency petition alleged that 13-year-old Jeffery Glassberg committed aggravated battery by shooting 14-year-old Barbara Ann Caire in the face with an 8 mm Mauser rifle.
- While playing with other children, Glassberg brought the rifle to a neighbor’s yard and at one point placed it on a slide.
- A cartridge containing paper wadding was in the rifle’s chamber; testimony was conflicting as to who loaded it.
- Later, the rifle discharged and injured Caire.
- Glassberg testified he did not intend to aim at Caire or discharge the gun.
- Caire testified she did not believe Glassberg intended to aim at or shoot her and viewed the incident as accidental.
- The juvenile court found Glassberg intentionally pointed the rifle toward Caire but did not intend to harm her; it nonetheless imputed general criminal intent and adjudicated him delinquent for aggravated battery, placing him on probation in his parents’ custody.

## Issues

1. Whether evidence that a juvenile pointed a rifle in another child’s direction, followed by an accidental discharge, is sufficient to prove the general criminal intent required for aggravated battery.
2. Whether an aggravated-battery delinquency adjudication may rest on imputing intent from the injury’s foreseeable result absent proof the juvenile intentionally fired or otherwise intentionally used force or violence.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Supreme Court set aside the delinquency adjudication for aggravated battery.
- The court held the record contained no factual proof of the requisite general criminal intent, i.e., no proof that Glassberg intentionally pulled the trigger or intentionally used force or violence.

## Legal Principles

- Battery requires an intentional use of force or violence upon another; aggravated battery is a battery committed with a dangerous weapon.
- General criminal intent may be inferred when circumstances show the offender must have adverted to criminal consequences as reasonably certain to result, but it still requires factual grounding.
- For an offense defined in terms of a prohibited act, criminal intent requires at least an intention to do the act constituting the offense; intent cannot be supplied solely by the occurrence of harm.
- Pointing a firearm during play, without proof of an intentional discharge or other intentional use of force or violence, is insufficient to establish general criminal intent for aggravated battery.

## Conclusion

The court vacated the juvenile’s aggravated-battery delinquency adjudication because the evidence supported an accidental shooting and failed to show that the juvenile intentionally committed the act constituting the battery, such as intentionally firing the rifle.


In re Glassberg, 230 La. 396, 88 So. 2d 707 (La. 1956)