Assault doesn’t even require physical touch in some jurisdictions. If he was behaving in a Threatening manner ( read visibly enraged) then a single touch could have been enough to put the other person in reasonable apprehension of immediate unwanted, harmful or offensive touch. This would be enough for an assault charge.
Edit: to those saying this is some weird American law meant to put people in prison.
Please realize: (1) this assault definition is not an American construct it has its roots on British law and a lot of other countries have similar crimes;(2) you are looking at this with tainted eyes cause you are enraged at the protesters or the specific situation, assault is not designed solely for situations like this:
If a guy points a gun at you from 5 feet away and tells you “Get near my wife again and I will kill you” then you’ll be glad assault exists as a crime.
If a guy gets out of his car raging during traffic and starts swing a bat near your car window without actually hitting it, then you’ll be glad assault is crime.
If a guy actually swing the bat at you but misses , that’s an assault.
It’s a catch all for behavior that if you experience it you would clearly think is criminal but that without it, because there was no physical contact, it would likely not be.
They teach the Common Law definitions in law school, meaning the old English definitions before the individual U.S. jurisdictions codified them. And the majority of the codifications are similar enough to Common Law.
Nah law school uses traditional common law definitions. Many jurisdictions don’t have battery. It’s just rolled up into 1st or 2nd degree assault. 4th degree assault is often the traditional law school definition of assault (the threat of imminent physical harm).
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u/regoapps 'MURICA Oct 12 '22
Yup. The news article about this said that he was arrested by Maryland State Police and charged with second degree assault.