Strangulation

The act of applying external pressure to a person's neck or throat sufficient to restrict breathing or blood flow, increasingly codified in criminal law as a distinct offense from ordinary assault or battery because of its documented association with a substantially heightened risk of homicide in domestic violence cases and its capacity to cause serious internal injury or death while often leaving few or no readily visible external marks. Research cited by prosecutors and domestic violence advocates, including studies associated with the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, has found that a domestic violence victim who has previously been strangled by a partner faces a markedly elevated risk of being killed by that same partner in a later incident, a finding that prompted most United States states to enact a specific non-fatal strangulation or suffocation offense in the decades since the early 2000s, generally classified as a felony and treated as more serious than a simple assault charge.