Court Opinion

ID: 9632877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:26:46.157582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:23.618908
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
specially concurring.
I am in accord with the ratio decidendi of the majority opinion insofar as it holds that *1051the State, in this instance, did prove an attempted battery. I concur in the majority opinion and the result there reached only insofar as it is premised on that conclusion.
I would leave open the question of whether the State must prove an attempted battery in order to secure a conviction of aggravated assault under § 6-4-506, W.S. 1977. I am not in agreement with the proposition that § 6-4-506 incorporates the definition of simple assault found in § 6-4-501, W.S.1977. I find wisdom and merit in the views of other courts as summarized in LaFave and Scott, Criminal Law, § 82, p. 611 (West Publishing Company, 1972):
"A majority of jurisdictions have extended the scope of the crime of assault to include, in addition to (not as an alternative to) the attempted-battery type of assault, the tort concept of the civil assault, which is committed when one, with intent to cause a reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily harm (though not to inflict such harm), does some act which causes such apprehension. * * *" (Footnote omitted.)
This rule is consistent with what the legislature of the State of Wyoming intended when it amended § 6-4-506, W.8.1977, by specifically including an unloaded firearm as a dangerous or deadly weapon. Ch. 70, § 1, S.L. of Wyoming 1975. I certainly have difficulty visualizing an attempted battery with an unloaded firearm, unless we are to insist that it must in that event by used or be presented as a club. I do not see that such a conclusion is required by the statute, nor can I find justification for an element of the crime applicable to other dangerous and deadly weapons but not applicable to an unloaded firearm.
This view is must the same as the view I expressed concerning the element of intent to cause a battery set forth in my concurring opinion in Fuller v. State, Wyo., 568 P.2d 900, 904 (1977). In Brown v. State, Wyo., 590 P.2d 1312 (1979), the court cited that concurring opinion for the proposition that the element of present ability had been eliminated from the crime defined by this statute, and the element of apparent ability had been substituted therefor.
If the issue clearly were present, I would hold that an addition to this crime of the tort concept of civil assault is a reasonable and logical application of the statute. Since the claimed element of present ability has been replaced by the element of apparent ability, I do not believe the definition in § 6-4-501, W.9.1977, ought to be followed, and while agreeing that it can be applied, I would not hold in this case that an attempted battery is an element of the crime under § 6-4-506, wW.8.1977.
If we are to rely upon the perception of the victim with respect to apparent ability, it is a logical parallel of that concept to rely upon the perception of the victim insofar as the intent of the perpetrator is concerned. I believe that is what the court held in Brown v. State, supra. It would be an appropriate basis for resolving this case, and would in my judgment eliminate a prospective debate in such cases involving the distance from the victim of the deadly and dangerous weapon in evaluating whether an attempted battery had occurred.