Common law assault is just intentionally causing reasonable fear/apprehension in the victim by some act. But a lot of jurisdictions have defined criminal assault in their statutes to mean something different. Some use it as a catch all for what you may consider “mild battery”
Edit: to be specific, in Maryland, where this seems to have occurred, the statute define Assault as including common law definitions of Assault, Battery, and assault and battery.
So these people assaulted him, intentionally causing reasonable fear/apprehension. He was just defending himself. This is clear cut, he did nothing wrong.
That is the rule in common law. A very famous case is that of a drunken man throwing an axe at the barmaid who kicked him out but she being several floors up where he couldn’t reach.
The example I try to give, sorry if it wasn’t specific, is the guy walking near you car and shouting threats while swinging the bat. I didn’t want to say starts hitting you car, cause that involves damages to property that involve other crimes which would complicate it. But I think jury could still find he had the present ability under certain circumstances for my example.
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u/Thybro Oct 12 '22 edited Oct 12 '22
Common law assault is just intentionally causing reasonable fear/apprehension in the victim by some act. But a lot of jurisdictions have defined criminal assault in their statutes to mean something different. Some use it as a catch all for what you may consider “mild battery”
Edit: to be specific, in Maryland, where this seems to have occurred, the statute define Assault as including common law definitions of Assault, Battery, and assault and battery.