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Say someone purposely provokes another person by insulting him, knowing that this person is easily provoked.

The provoked person then hits him.

Can the person then report a crime or even file a civil lawsuit on his assaulter, all in the aim of getting that person behind bars?

user1034912
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    Imprisonment is not an available remedy in a civil lawsuit. – JBentley Nov 09 '20 at 10:28
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    It is possible to do, it would often not be successful. I suspect that the question really intended is whether provocation is an affirmative defense to battery, which varies by jurisdiction. – ohwilleke Nov 10 '20 at 01:50
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    Needs a location tag, obviously laws vary considerably between locations. – Kat Nov 10 '20 at 02:56
  • Provoking is a not a crime; not sure what happens if it extends into harassment. Exclaiming slurs against a protected class of people can be reported as hate speech. Neither authorizes the victim to use physical force. If you use hate speech and someone uses physical force then both can be charge accordingly regardless of which action was first in line. – MonkeyZeus Nov 11 '20 at 14:18
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    If you provoke someone to kill you then yes that person will be locked up. However, you'll be off the hook even if you used hate speech. – MonkeyZeus Nov 11 '20 at 14:20
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    If you meant exactly what you Posted - "Can a person purposely provoke someone… then report a crime" - the Answer would prolly be no, depending on jurisdiction.

    Since the devil is in the details, are the original words all that matters or are there other factors?

     – Robbie Goodwin Nov 12 '20 at 01:18
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    Of course the person can report a crime (unless they are in some weird jurisdiction that restricts this). But how seriously the police will take it (if at all), or how a judge will respond to it, and therefore whether the other person ends up in jail, is another matter. – Brian Drake Nov 12 '20 at 04:06

4 Answers4

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It is legal to insult a person (at least in the US: it's a crime in Indonesia). It is legal to report a crime. It is therefore legal to insult a person and report the ensuing crime. The law assumes that a person has enough self-control that they will not commit a crime when insulted. A person who hurls the insult might be found contributorily negligent, which could reduce the assailant's liability or even eliminate it, depending on the state.

user6726
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    “or even eliminate it, depending on the state” — Could you please cite some statutes? – gen-ℤ ready to perish Nov 09 '20 at 05:01
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    AFAIK this is a common law rule, and states with comparative negligence are the ones with statutes saying otherwise. I'll see if I find an explicit statute. – user6726 Nov 09 '20 at 05:51
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    If my culpability for throat chopping a rude little ***** is somehow eliminated then I want to have the quotes to back it up to the judge – gen-ℤ ready to perish Nov 09 '20 at 06:14
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words – Davor Nov 09 '20 at 09:56
  • @Davor This article first explains that fighting words are insults, and then that insults are not fighting words. I'm confused. Did I misunderstand something? What are fighting words if not insults? (I'm interested in the US section specifically.) – user31389 Nov 09 '20 at 12:51
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    @user31389 from a purely logical point of view, this holds if some insults are not fighting words, but all fighting words are insults (i.e. fighting words is a subset of insults). I suggest an example of an insult that's not fighting talk Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries. – Chris H Nov 09 '20 at 13:11
  • @user31389 - I can't say I know more than you, but it seems that it's up to a judge to decide. But it seems lately that anything goes/ – Davor Nov 09 '20 at 13:56
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    @user31389 Fighting words are those that "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." So, essentially a call to imminent and specific lawless action. However, while the supreme court keeps asserting that "fighting words" can be regulated, no set of language that has come before them in the past half-century has actually constituted fighting words. So, unclear what language would actually qualify. – fectin Nov 09 '20 at 15:22
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    @fectin "The Court analyzed the history of Georgia’s application of the statute and concluded that it had been invoked repeatedly to punish the use of communications that were “not ‘fighting words’ as Chaplinsky defines them.” Thus, the Court concluded that the statute was overbroad because it was “susceptible of application to protected expression.” The Court reached this conclusion despite the fact that Wilson’s words would likely have been punishable under a more narrowly drawn statute drafted in conformance to the requirements of Chaplinsky." – Yakk Nov 09 '20 at 19:34
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    @fectin The court found that the words used where plausible fighting words, but the statute was over-broad and hence invalid, so there was no offense. The problem the courts object to is failure to craft a statute that clearly covers (some?) fighting words, and doesn't cover any non-fighting words. Because if it (substatially?) covers non-fighting words, the statute is invalid even if this instance was used against fighting words. – Yakk Nov 09 '20 at 19:36
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    Don't forget there's a jury of humans involved in any potential criminal trial, plus a wide variety of sentencing options available. If you clearly instigated the whole thing, they're likely going to be a lot more lenient than they would be for an unprovoked assault. – bta Nov 09 '20 at 21:52
  • Insults are a crime in Indonesia? That sounds like a very, very easy law to break, especially depending on what somebody else would consider "an insult"... –  Nov 10 '20 at 03:28
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    This answer's logic is invalid. The fact that two things are individually legal does not mean that they are legal to do in combination. For example, it is legal to get drunk, and it is legal to drive motor vehicles, but it is illegal to do both at the same time. – user2357112 Nov 10 '20 at 14:28
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    @ChrisH And fighting words that are not an insult: "Sir, it is my honest intention to [specific act leading to grievous bodily harm] to your [loved one], and I shall begin forthwith. Good day!" – user8675309 Nov 11 '20 at 04:46
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People hurling abuse at one another and starting fights happens absolutely all the time, especially when drink has been taken, and will be a regular part of police business.

In the UK, potentially both parties can be prosecuted; the Public Order Act prohibits "abusive or threatening words or behaviour". It specifically prohibits provocation: "to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another". However, because it's the public order act it only applies in public places and not in houses.

pjc50
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    All the offences in Part 1 of the Public Order Act 1986 can be committed in either a public or private place. There are exceptions at s.4 (conduct carried out in a dwelling and no-one else is present) s.4A and s.5 (both parties are within a dwelling). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/contents –  Nov 09 '20 at 11:14
  • I think that given the note about public order law applying in public place, you might want to talk about domestic violence laws. I can imagine a scenario where a wife insults her husband to provoke him into hitting her, so that she can call the police on him for domestic violence. – nick012000 Nov 10 '20 at 05:52
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Just broadly speaking, the law doesn't operate in black and white.

If you act in a manner that encourages somebody to strike you (especially with the ultimate intention to get them to do so), that is certainly a factor the judge would look at when deciding punishment. So you may just end up with a broken nose, and they may just have to pay a nominal fine.

Also, without knowing what your jurisdiction is, it's almost certainly the case, that suing them will not result them going to jail.

Gregory Currie
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    One famous tennis player was found guilty and given a £1 fine for smashing the camera of a paparazzi, with no damages to pay. – gnasher729 Nov 09 '20 at 13:11
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It depends on the jurisdiction. pjc50 has given a link to the law in the UK. In the USA, what you are talking about is known legally as "fighting words."

The US Supreme Court has recognized that some speech is so offensive that it has no First Amendment protection. Such "fighting words" "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

This doctrine, and successive decisions upholding it, have been criticized because it limits the apparently absolute protection of speech in the First Amendment. Here is an exhaustive discussion of that idea.

In some states, an immediate retaliation, in the form of a punch to the face (the "Fist Amendment"), was once viewed as fair. At least, the police and other authorities recognized that there was little chance of an insulted person who delivered violence in return being convicted by a jury. This was enforced unfairly, of course, according to the prejudices of local law enforcement.

That is no longer the case anywhere in the US. The "fighting words" are disorderly conduct, and a punch in return is a battery. The police will arrest both of you, or if there is no serious physical harm, more likely suggest you call it a night and sober up.

A civil suit by either party is a possibility, and will inevitably result in a countersuit. Neither person can go to jail for losing a civil suit, no lawyer should get involved in such a suit, and a sensible judge will tell the parties that nobody wins, so shake hands.

Wastrel
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  • Aside from the original mention in Chaplinskey v. New Hampshire, which said "Fighting Words" are not protected, there has been no SCOTUS case re Fighting Words which establish a legal definintion of what it is, but rather what it is not. There are even some legal scholars who will argue that the constraints of Fighting Word Doctrine have essentially made it not a thing any longer. – hszmv Nov 09 '20 at 14:32
  • Somewhat true, however, police will [link]{https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/2015/01/21/fighting-words-doctrine-active-says-minnesota-appeals-court/) arrest people for "disorderly conduct" for extended and profane speech. There are other recent examples. – Wastrel Nov 09 '20 at 20:44
  • The case referenced there apparently mentions a "recent" Supreme Court decision. As for actually defining "fighting words" that is a job for the legislature, should they decide to try. Otherwise, it's decided by courts on a case-by-case basis. – Wastrel Nov 09 '20 at 20:49
  • @hszmv - How likely is such a case to go to SCOTUS though? I know of at least one instance of a Judge in rural Oklahoma invoking the doctrine for words exchanged between lawyers in his courtroom a year or two ago. So "fighting words" is (admittedly anecdotally) A Thing in the US. – T.E.D. Nov 11 '20 at 14:39
  • @T.E.D. The Cases I found via Wikipedia article "Fighting Words" are "Street v. New York", "Cohen v. California," "Gooding v. Wilson," "Rosenfield v. New Jersey," "Lewis v. New Orleans," "Brown v. Oklahoma," "Collin v. Smith," "R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul," and "Virginia v. Black." "Snyder v. Phelps" is the only possible example of SCOTUS possibly agreeing that language was fighting words, but this was in the dissent and the majority opinion did not broach this subject of First Amendment issues as they were satisfied with the laws as they were stated regarding funeral protests+ – hszmv Nov 12 '20 at 12:46
  • @T.E.D. I don't deny that there could be lower court decisions on fighting word doctrines that are upheld but they have for one reason or another never reached SCOTUS and thus those cases are not binding on the nation as a whole, but merely the subset of the nation under that court's jurisdiction. And it doesn't mean Fighting Words is not a thing... just that since all cases invoking fighting words have been rejected by majority opinion, the scope of fighting words doctrine is very narrow to the point of almost overturning it. – hszmv Nov 12 '20 at 12:50