Carter v. Commonwealth

“[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…