Court Opinion

ID: 9564517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:02:03.611095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:28.136208
License: Public Domain

BENTON, J.,
dissenting.
“[I]n the early law a criminal assault was an attempt to commit a battery and that only.” R. Perkins, Criminal Law at 159 (3d ed.1982). Consistent with that view, the common law of assault has long been defined in Virginia as follows:
“An assault is an attempt or offer, with force and violence, to do some bodily hurt to another, whether from wantonness or malice, by means calculated to produce the end if carried into execution; as by striking at him with a stick or other weapon, or without a weapon, though he be not struck, or even by raising up the arm or a cane in a menacing manner, by throwing a bottle of glass with an intent to strike, by levelling a gun at another within a distance from which, supposing it to be loaded, the contents might injure, or any similar act accompanied with circumstances denoting an intention coupled with a present ability, of using actual violence against the person of another. But no words whatever, be they ever so provoking, can amount to an assault; * * * ”. (Italics supplied).
Harper v. Commonwealth, 196 Va. 723, 733, 85 S.E.2d 249, 255 (1955) (citation omitted). See also Berkeley v. Commonwealth, 88 Va. 1017, 1017-18, 14 S.E. 916, 916 (1892).
In the present case, the issue concerns whether the pointing of a finger while uttering the word “pow” is an act performed either “by means calculated to produce the end if carried into execution” or “with a present ability of using actual violence,” which is an illustrative circumstance contained in the definition of assault. Harper, 196 Va. at 733, 85 S.E.2d at 255. The common law definition of “assault” as contained in Harper does not encompass this type of intentional conduct, which is intended to be frightening but is performed without a present ability to produce the end if carried out. Because of the limitations of this common law rule, “most modern codes either include physical menacing in the crime of assault or else *453create a separate crime of ‘menacing’ or ‘threatening’ covering such conduct.” 2 LaFave and Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 7.16(b), at 315 n. 27 (1986). When legislatures statutorily define the crime in this manner “[f]or this type of assault, a present ability to inflict injury is clearly unnecessary.” Id. at 315. See e.g. Williamson v. United States, 445 A.2d 975, 978 (D.C.App.1982) (holding that by statute an assault is established by proving “a menacing threat, which may or may not be accomplished by a specific intent to injure”); Barrios v. State, 118 Md.App. 384, 702 A.2d 961, 970 (1997) (noting that by statute Maryland provides for alternative forms of assault, one of which is “an assault of the intentional frightening variety ... [that only] required in terms of perception ... an apparent present ability from the viewpoint of the threatened victim”); State v. Riley, 141 Vt. 29, 442 A.2d 1297, 1298 (1982) (noting that Vermont’s assault statute, which is patterned on the Model Penal Code, permits prosecution “against a person who places another in fear of bodily injury, even if the alleged assailant acts without purpose to carry out the threat”).
I, therefore, disagree with the majority opinion’s holding that although Carter “had no actual ability to harm the officer with a gun, his conduct ... denoted an intention and the present ability to harm the officer.” I would hold that Carter committed an “act accompanied with circumstances denoting an intention” to menace but it was not “coupled with a present ability of using actual violence” or “calculated to produce the end if carried into execution.” Harper, 196 Va. at 733, 85 S.E.2d at 255. See e.g. People v. Marceaux, 3 Cal.App.3d 613, 83 Cal.Rptr. 798, 803 (1970) (holding that “an assault conviction cannot be predicted upon an intent only to frighten”); People v. Vaiza, 244 Cal.App.2d 121, 52 Cal.Rptr. 733, 735 (1966) (holding that “[i]f a person threatens to shoot another with ... a chocolate candy pistol, there is no ability to commit ... any injury with it on the person of another”); Johnson v. State, 158 Ga.App. 432, 280 S.E.2d 856, 857 (1981) (holding that the evidence failed to establish “the present ability to inflict a violent injury” where the evidence proved the accused shook his finger while making a threat at persons in a car); *454Bacon v. Bacon, 567 N.W.2d 414, 418 (Iowa 1997) (holding that “[t]he offender must have the apparent ability to execute the act constituting the assault”).
Because Virginia continues to be guided by the common law rule concerning assault, I would hold that the conviction is not supported because the evidence failed to prove Carter acted “by means calculated to produce the end if carried into execution.” Harper, 196 Va. at 733, 85 S.E.2d at 255.