The word covers an enormous range. A shove in a bar parking lot that leaves a bruise is a battery. So is a punch that fractures an orbital bone, and so is a blow that costs someone the permanent use of a hand. Wisconsin sorts that range into degrees, and the degree is not a matter of prosecutorial mood — it is a function of two variables the statute defines with some precision: how badly the victim was hurt, and what the defendant intended.
Understanding those two variables is most of what a person charged with battery needs in order to understand the case. It is also where the defenses live.
First, a numbering change worth knowing about
If you have looked this up before — or if your lawyer, your search engine, or an older article told you that battery in Wisconsin is § 940.19 — that citation is out of date. The Legislature recodified the battery offenses in 2025 Wisconsin Act 24, and they now sit in a new Subchapter III of Chapter 940, titled “Bodily Security; Battery.” The current sections are:
- § 940.51 — definitions for the subchapter
- § 940.60 — battery, substantial battery, aggravated battery
- § 940.61 — battery; bodily harm caused by certain persons
- § 940.62 — battery; bodily harm caused to certain persons
- § 940.65 — battery to an unborn child
- § 940.66 — battery to an elder person or an adult at risk
The substance did not change beyond recognition, but the citations did, and the old ones are now referred to in the statutes as the 2023 stats. versions. That matters practically: an outdated form, an outdated online resource, or a charging document that cites a repealed section is worth a second look.
The three degrees under § 940.60
Section 940.60 opens with an exception — it applies except as provided in §§ 940.61, 940.62, 940.65, and 940.66 — and then sets out three degrees.
Battery, under § 940.60(1), is committed by whoever causes bodily harm to another by an act done with intent to cause bodily harm to that person or another, without the consent of the person so harmed. It is a Class A misdemeanor: under § 939.51(3)(a), a fine not to exceed $10,000 or imprisonment not to exceed 9 months, or both.
Substantial battery, under § 940.60(2), is committed by whoever causes substantial bodily harm to another by an act done with intent to cause bodily harm. It is a Class I felony — under § 939.50(3)(i), a fine not to exceed $10,000 or imprisonment not to exceed 3 years and 6 months, or both. Note what is missing from that subsection: the words “without the consent.” That omission is not an accident, and it has consequences discussed below.
Aggravated battery, under § 940.60(3), comes in three varieties:
- Causing great bodily harm with intent to cause bodily harm — a Class H felony, a fine not to exceed $10,000 or imprisonment not to exceed 6 years, or both, under § 939.50(3)(h).
- Causing great bodily harm with intent to cause great bodily harm — a Class E felony, a fine not to exceed $50,000 or imprisonment not to exceed 15 years, or both, under § 939.50(3)(e).
- Intentionally causing bodily harm by conduct that creates a substantial risk of great bodily harm — a Class H felony. This one carries a rebuttable presumption: conduct creating a substantial risk of great bodily harm is presumed if the person harmed has a physical disability, congenital or acquired, that is discernible by an ordinary person viewing that person, or that is actually known to the defendant.
The jump from the first variety to the second is nine years of exposure, and the only difference between them is what the defendant meant to do. That is why intent is litigated so hard in these cases.
The definitions do the real work
Three defined terms in § 939.22 separate a nine-month misdemeanor from a fifteen-year felony, and they are worth reading slowly.
“Bodily harm” means physical pain or injury, illness, or any impairment of physical condition. That is a low threshold — pain alone is enough, with no visible injury required. The annotations to the statute include State v. Higgs, in which the act of throwing urine that strikes another and causes pain was held to constitute a battery.
“Substantial bodily harm” is defined by a list rather than a standard: bodily injury that causes a laceration requiring stitches, staples, or a tissue adhesive; any fracture of a bone; a broken nose; a burn; a petechia; a temporary loss of consciousness, sight, or hearing; a concussion; or a loss or fracture of a tooth. Because it is a closed list, it is checkable. Did the laceration actually require stitches, or did the emergency department close it with tape? Is there imaging showing a fracture? Was there a diagnosed concussion, or only a report of a headache? These are not quibbles; they are the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony conviction.
“Great bodily harm” means bodily injury which creates a substantial risk of death, or which causes serious permanent disfigurement, or which causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ, or other serious bodily injury. That standard is genuinely serious, and the word permanent or protracted is frequently the contested one.
When the charge escalates because of who was involved
Two sections take the same underlying conduct and raise the class because of the identity of the actor or the victim.
Section 940.61 looks at who caused the harm. Battery by a person subject to an injunction under § 813.12 or § 813.125, or a tribal injunction filed under § 813.128(3g), committed against the petitioner who sought that injunction, is a Class I felony. Battery by a prisoner confined to a state prison, jail, or other detention facility against an officer, employee, visitor, or another inmate is a Class H felony, as is battery by a person placed in a facility under § 980.04 or § 980.065 against an officer, employee, agent, visitor, or other resident.
Section 940.62 looks at who was harmed, and the list is longer than most people expect. The Class I felony categories in subsection (1) include public officers; county, city, village, or town employees enforcing zoning ordinances or building codes, on the statute’s conditions; election officials, election registration officials, and county and municipal clerks; technical college district and school district officers and employees; and operators, drivers, and passengers of public transit vehicles.
The Class H felony categories in subsection (2) include judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, guardians ad litem, corporation counsel, advocates, attorneys, witnesses, and jurors — and their family members — where the act is in response to action taken in an official capacity or in a legal proceeding; probation, extended supervision, parole, community supervision, and aftercare agents; certain Department of Revenue, Department of Safety and Professional Services, and Department of Workforce Development officials; firefighters and commission wardens; and health care providers and people who work in health care facilities, along with their family members.
Each of those categories carries statutory conditions, and the conditions are defenses in disguise. Nearly all of them require that the defendant knew or had reason to know the victim’s status, and most require that the act be connected to the victim’s official function. A bar fight that happens to involve an off-duty employee of a school district is not, without more, a § 940.62 case.
Two further sections complete the subchapter: § 940.65 covers battery to an unborn child in parallel degrees, and § 940.66 covers battery to an elder person — defined in § 940.51(6) as anyone 60 years of age or older — or an adult at risk, with both intentional and reckless variants and classes running from Class I up to Class C. Section 940.66(4) draws a sharp distinction: mistake about the victim’s age is not a defense in an elder-person case, but the State must prove actual knowledge that the victim was an adult at risk.
Battery and domestic abuse: not a separate crime
There is no Wisconsin crime called “domestic violence battery.” What exists is an ordinary battery charge with two statutory attachments.
The first is the domestic abuse surcharge under § 973.055(1) — $100 for each offense, imposed regardless of whether any fine is imposed, when the conviction is for one of the listed crimes (§ 940.60 is on the list) and the court finds the conduct involved an act against a spouse or former spouse, an adult with whom the defendant resides or formerly resided, or an adult with whom the defendant has a child.
The second is the domestic abuse repeater enhancer under § 939.621. If the defendant qualifies — by committing a domestic abuse crime within 72 hours of a domestic-abuse arrest, or by two or more qualifying convictions in the preceding ten years — the maximum term of imprisonment may be increased by not more than 2 years. Critically, the statute provides that the enhancer changes the status of a misdemeanor to a felony. A Class A misdemeanor battery does not stay a misdemeanor in that posture.
These cases also begin differently. Under § 968.075(2), an officer with reasonable grounds to believe a person is committing or has committed domestic abuse amounting to a crime shall arrest if there is evidence of physical injury, or a reasonable basis to believe continued abuse is likely, or the person is the predominant aggressor. The statute also directs officers to identify the predominant aggressor and provides that it is generally not appropriate to arrest anyone else. Who got arrested is therefore, in part, a judgment made in a driveway at speed — and it is a judgment that can be wrong. We covered the related 72-hour no-contact rule in an earlier article.
The defenses
Self-defense. This is the defense in a large share of battery cases, and § 939.48(1) states it plainly: a person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another to prevent or terminate what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his person, using only such force as he reasonably believes necessary. Force intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm requires a reasonable belief that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Section 939.48(1m) adds a narrower rule for cases in which the actor intentionally used force intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm: where the person against whom that force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcibly entering the actor’s dwelling, motor vehicle, or place of business, and the statute’s other conditions are met, the court may not consider whether the actor had an opportunity to flee or retreat, and shall presume that the actor reasonably believed the force was necessary. The limits are real too: under § 939.48(2)(a), a person who engages in unlawful conduct likely to provoke an attack, and thereby provokes one, generally forfeits the privilege.
Intent. Battery requires an act done with intent to cause bodily harm. Accidental contact is not battery, and neither is contact in which the harm was not intended — a distinction that carries real weight when the injury is the sort that lands in the substantial or great categories.
Consent. Section 940.60(1) contains a nonconsent element; § 940.60(2) and (3) do not. That drafting difference is precisely what the Wisconsin Supreme Court addressed in State v. Richards, holding that under the elements-only test, offenses under subsections requiring proof of nonconsent are not lesser included offenses of those for which nonconsent need not be proved. It is a technical point with practical consequences for what a jury may be permitted to consider.
The degree itself. Section 939.66 permits conviction of either the crime charged or an included crime, but not both, and subsection (2m) provides that an included crime may be a less serious or equally serious type of battery. Contesting the degree — arguing that the proof supports battery rather than substantial battery, or the Class H rather than the Class E variety of aggravated battery — is frequently more productive than an all-or-nothing acquittal theory.
Identification and proof. Battery charges often arise from chaotic scenes with intoxicated witnesses and conflicting accounts. Who struck whom first, whether the injury came from the blow or from the fall, and whether the person now identified in court is the person who was there at all are ordinary contested questions. So is whether statements were properly obtained; our article on your rights during a stop, a search, and questioning covers that ground.
One caution about the case law: the published annotations to §§ 940.60, 940.61, and 940.62 carry an express note that they relate to the battery statutes in effect before the 2025 recodification. The cases remain instructive on the elements, which largely carried forward — but anyone relying on them should be reading the current statutory text alongside.
Related charges that often travel with battery
Strangulation and suffocation is a separate crime under § 940.235: intentionally impeding the normal breathing or circulation of blood by applying pressure on the throat or neck, or by blocking the nose or mouth, is a Class H felony, and a Class G felony where the actor has a prior conviction under that section or for a qualifying violent crime. It is charged alongside battery with some frequency, and it converts what a client thinks of as a misdemeanor case into a felony one.
Talk to a New Berlin criminal defense lawyer
A battery charge in Wisconsin can be a Class A misdemeanor that turns on whether a shove caused pain, or a Class E felony that turns on what a defendant intended in a two-second exchange. The statute has just been renumbered, the degrees turn on defined terms that are checkable against the medical records, and the identity of the person harmed can move the charge two or three classes on its own. None of that should be sorted out by guesswork.
Carson Law Office handles criminal defense matters throughout New Berlin, Waukesha County, Milwaukee, West Allis, Wauwatosa, and the surrounding communities, including battery, substantial battery, aggravated battery, strangulation, and related charges. Call (262) 860-8932 or contact us here for a straight assessment of what you are facing and what can still be done about it.
This article provides general information about Wisconsin law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; for advice about your own situation, speak with a licensed Wisconsin attorney.