A fight outside a bar, and the medical report that decides everything.

TCK 86/1. A person who intentionally causes pain to the body of another, or causes deterioration of another's health or capacity to perceive, is punished with one year and six months to three years' imprisonment.

TCK 86/2. Where the effect of the injury on the person is slight, to the extent that it can be remedied by a simple medical intervention, the offence is punished on the complaint of the victim with six months to one year and six months of imprisonment or a judicial fine. Where the offence is committed against a woman, the lower limit of the sentence cannot be less than nine months.

TCK 86/3. The sentence is increased by half — and the offence ceases to depend on a complaint — where the injury is inflicted with a weapon, against an ascendant, descendant, spouse, former spouse or sibling, against a person unable to defend themselves physically or mentally, on account of a public duty the victim performs, or by abuse of the influence a public official holds. Where it is committed with brutal feeling, the sentence is doubled. A bottle or a knife picked up in a bar therefore moves the file out of TCK 86/2 altogether, and a withdrawn complaint no longer ends it.

Where the injury produces certain consequences, the sentence is determined under TCK 87 rather than the base range. Among them:

• Where the injury causes a bone fracture or dislocation, the sentence determined under TCK 86 is increased by up to half according to the effect of the fracture or dislocation on the functions of life.
• Where death results from intentional injury, the sentence is ten to fourteen years in cases falling under the first paragraph of TCK 86, and fourteen to eighteen years in cases falling under the third paragraph.

TCK 88: where intentional injury is committed by omission, the sentence may be reduced by up to two thirds, applying the conditions relevant to intentional killing by omission.

• The medical reports on both sides. In a mutual altercation there are usually two, and they are frequently not obtained with equal diligence. Obtaining a report for your own injuries, promptly, is often the single most useful practical step.
• Who started it. Provocation and self-defence are separate concepts with separate consequences, and both depend on an account of sequence that camera footage frequently settles.
• Camera footage. Bars, streets and hotels overwrite recordings on a short cycle. A request to preserve footage made in the first days is worth more than any argument made in the sixth month.
• Complaint and withdrawal. Where the file is under TCK 86/2, it proceeds on complaint. Whether a complaint exists, and whether it is withdrawn, is decisive there and irrelevant elsewhere.
• Whether detention is even available. Under CMK 100/4, no detention order may be made for offences carrying only a judicial fine, or where the upper limit of imprisonment is not more than two years — except for offences committed intentionally against bodily integrity. Assault is the express exception, which is why people are surprised to find remand on the table in what they regard as a minor incident. Beyond CMK 100/4, CMK 100/3 lists offences for which a ground for detention may be presumed where there is strong suspicion based on concrete evidence — among them intentional injury under TCK 86/3(b), (e) and (f), aggravated-consequence injury under TCK 87, and intentional injury committed against a woman.