What is your intent?
I’m not asking what anyone else in the hypothetical thinks your intent is while you’re doing it, because AFAICT that’s irrelevant. I’m asking: what’s your intent when you try to share those cookies with a toddler? Are you trying to cause fear?
I am trying to determine if they are safe to eat.
I don’t think that’s correct. Possibly the suspect can sue Columbo in civil court but a criminal assault will require intent. Then in civil court the case will be dismissed because the suspect does not have ‘clean hands’.
I agree that criminal assault would require intent from Person A, but I don’t believe that Person B needs to think, at that time, that Person A has that intent. And I believe Columbo had that intent, but that — if he doesn’t admit to it while he’s under oath — yeah, he could pretend that he didn’t expect what he presumably expected, and that he didn’t intend what he presumably intended.
Yes they do have to think at the time that there was an intent to harm them.
If you put a bomb in a box that will go off if the box is opened but you don’t tell someone about the bomb and they attempt to open the box they aren’t assaulting you. They are merely attempting to open a box, they have no intent to harm you, you don’t think they intend to harm you, and there’s no assault of any kind.
I think you’re mixing up two things, here.
As I understand it, the question is whether the person opening the box has an intent to cause fear — not whether they have an intent to harm anyone, and not whether the other person thinks they have an intent to cause harm, and not whether the other person thinks they have an intent to cause fear.
I am reminded of a Criminal Intent where Goren was trying to elicit a spontaneous confession out of a suspect who not only had killed the victim of the week, but Goren suspects may have in fact murdered several others that were classed as muggings. After getting the suspect worked up and in an excited emotional state, he shows a bit of evidence, a license plate number of a previous victim that the suspect had written down. The suspect says, “that’s no evidence”, grabs it, and yells “it isn’t even the right plate number!” Oops!
Since Columbo had to manufacture the case, as the real one did in fact explode, it would have been better (?) if Roddy had yelled at Lt that “that isn’t even the same case I rigged!”
[quote=“The_Other_Waldo_Pepper, post:166, topic:1013310, full:true”]
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say there. An assault is something that happens in the mind of a victim. It doesn’t become an assault because of something in the mind of the perpetrator discovered after the fact. No fear of harm from an assailant and there’s no assault. The suspect in this case did not believe Columbo was an assailant, did not believe Colombo intended to harm him. He was not assaulted.
Without taking sides, I doubt that any Columbo episode has ever been discussed this much.
Coming back around, in another episode, Columbo got the win against Dick Van Dyke by yammering on and on about how he’d personally blown up the kidnapper’s instant-camera photo, albeit while clumsily destroying the original in the process, and this here image of the no-numbers analog clock proves the crime happened when (a) the guy you blamed has an ironclad alibi, but (b) you, sir, have no alibi. Dick Van Dyke — who of course realizes that Columbo has, while blowing it up, reversed the image — grabs the instant camera that would still have a negative that’ll reveal the truth, and says so.
Which is to say: grabbing that camera, and not, y’know, one of the other ones that were right next to it.
But my point is, he has fear of harm from Columbo: no, he doesn’t have fear that Columbo is about to intentionally harm him; but, yes, he does have fear that Columbo is about to harm him.
Considering the number of people who discuss episodes of Columbo I’m sure that it has. Possibly not in so lengthy a discussion by a small group of people, but certainly in the entirety of all people discussing a particular episode.
And again, not an assault. He feared unintentional harm from Columbo’s actions. And the suspect was perfectly capable of eliminating that fear by revealing what he had done, which is what he did.
You’re saying he feared harm from Columbo’s actions. Yes, you’re saying he feared unintentional harm, but you and I agree that he feared harm from Columbo’s actions.
I’d add that, if Columbo intended to cause that effect, AFAICT, that can satisfy the requirements of it being a crime.
He has fear of harm from his own actions, from his bomb that he made.
If I served you wine from a bottle that you secretly poisoned it is comical that you could blame me for your fear, that I am somehow the cause of your discomfort. You caused your own problems, not me.
He’s not scared because Columbo opened a box, he’s scared of the bomb that he himself put in the box.
Which is both Columbo’s strength as an investigator, and the reason I can’t take the show in large doses. He annoys people so much and gets them flustered so much they make mistakes. But in the aggregate, there aren’t that many people that commit foolproof crimes, are arrogant enough to go against Columbo, and have someone as smart as Columbo working the case.
And in real life Columbo’s trick depends on precise timing. It’s often an all-or-nothing play. I guess, like Hamilton Burger, we just don’t see the 15 cases where Columbo tries the same tricks, but the perp is too smart or clever or just lucky. No convictions don’t make for good TV!
I’d enjoy as long a discussion of The Most Dangerous Match, or Swan Song, but mostly because I wanted Johnny Cash to murder Columbo and leave his body in the desert. It was a stupid play by Columbo to trust him to not do that. 
I disagree. I think it’s entirely accurate to say that he’s scared because Columbo opened the box. Yes, it’s also accurate to say that he’s scared because of his own actions, but it’s also also accurate to say he’s scared because of Columbo’s actions.
Look, if there’s a gun in front of us that we both know is unloaded, and you load it, and I pick it up and point it at you and start to pull the trigger, I believe there’s a sense in which someone could say you’re scared of the bullets that you put in the gun, but I believe it’s also accurate ro say that you’re scared that I’m going to pull the trigger. And I don’t see what changes if you don’t know the real thing secretly got swapped out for a fake, or if you don’t know that I know you loaded the real thing: you can still be scared that I’m going to pull the trigger.
It absolutely does depend on this, though. Assault isn’t actual injury, it’s about threatening injury.
so its definition rests entirely on what both parties believe about conduct that could lead to an injury.
Let’s say you’re a pedestrian crossing the road, maybe with a convenient policeman standing around. I’m rolling down the road in my SUV and I come dangerously close to running you down. You yell out, the policeman’s attention is aroused, and very shortly I’m in cuffs.
But what am I charged with? It very much depends on what you & the police feel my intent was. If they feel that I intended to hurt you, then it’s assault (and they have to prove that intent). If they can’t prove intent, then it’s some flavor of reckless endangerment.
Off the top of my head, we do get to see him fail, partway through the episode, against Robert Culp: he’s been pestering Culp about one murder all this time, and Culp has just committed another murder to cover up the first one, and, well, when word comes in that one of Culp’s employees has been found dead, the scruffy lieutenant with a beat-up car that sometimes works asks Culp for a ride over to the scene of the crime. Culp obliges, and once they’re in his much fancier car and preparing to get on the road, Culp innocuously asks which way he should go, and Columbo pretends to have no idea what he’s talking about, and Culp smugly explains that he wouldn’t know where they’re going, would he?
Right, but: in that scenario, AFAIK I don’t need to believe, at the time, that you intended to harm me, or that you intended to cause fear; just that you were about to harm me. I can later learn that you intended to harm me, or intense to cause fear.