Appellate Court Overturns Battery Conviction Based on Insufficient Proof of Pattern

The appellate court overturned a lower court's conviction for repeated battery under Article 126 (2)(a) of the Penal Code, where the accused was charged with assaulting his daughter on a single specified date, with the lower court relying only on prior, years-old investigation records to establish repetition. The appellate court reasoned that for a prosecution ex officio under this provision, the legislature intended for battery to be considered "repeated" only if the acts are numerous and systematic, occurring in close temporal proximity, such that they constitute a pattern or habit, and that a single incident cannot be aggregated with unsubstantiated or very old prior allegations to meet this threshold.