Opinion ID: 1956713
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Intention and Existing Ability to do some violence.

Text: The defendant's first contention, that the instant indictment is fatally insufficient because it fails to allege that the accused had an intention and existing ability to do some violence to the victim, is without merit. Since the present indictment specifically states that the defendant did strike, hit, touch and do violence to Hiatalahti and further that said assault and battery was of a high and aggravated nature, such a factual charge of assault and battery, as distinguished from a mere charge of assault, readily connotes a general intention to do violence and an existing ability to carry out that intention. It would have been quite superfluous in the instant case to characterize the defendant's conduct beyond the allegations of the indictment. State v. Woodward, 69 Wyo. 262, 240 P.2d 1157 (1952). We must bear in mind that an assault, either at common law or under the statute, is not a specific intent crime in the sense, as we stated in State v. Little, Me., 343 A.2d 180, 185 (1975), that defendant must have an actual subjective state of mind to cause bodily harm to the victim. The subjective `intent' necessary is an intention of defendant to do the act which he does. With such `intent' present, whether an assault has been committed depends thereafter upon an evaluation of objective circumstances, namely, whether the act done has objective potential to produce bodily harm. It is equally true that the crime of assault and battery is not a specific intent crime. Paraphrasing what we said in State v. Anania, Me., 340 A.2d 207, 211 (1975), we recognize that the statutory language of intention . . . to do some violence to another was not intended to require a subjectively existing conscious purpose to do some violence. The statute, declaratory of the common law (see State v. Worrey, Me., 322 A.2d 73, 80 (1974)), merely confirms that the general criminal intent involved in the intentional doing of an act which has the inherent potential of causing bodily harm is all that is intended. See also State v. Bowden, Me., 342 A.2d 281, 286 (1975). In an assault and battery indictment, as in this case, it was not required that the charging instrument allege in the terms of the statute or in equivalent language that the striking, hitting, touching and doing violence was accompanied by an intention and existing ability to do some violence. The indictment was sufficient in this respect.