Kaffis Mark V wrote:
Wait, wait. We may have done this before, DE -- is Ohio a State that differentiates menacing from assault?
'Cause I come from a background where what is sometimes separated as menacing is part of the assault common law.
Common law offenses are abrogated in Ohio.
Yes, Ohio does separate menacing from Assault. There is a fine difference, however, between menacing and assault, because there is no "attempted assault"; the crime of assault already includes attempt in its language and you can't "attempt to attempt" a crime. Foir most crimes, attempt is charged under the "Attempt" statute, referencing the statute that the attempt is in regard to, but for any crime (assault being the most prominent example) where attempt is already part of the crime, you just charge them with the crime itself.
In any case, a person does not actually have to have harmed you in order for you to be legally permitted to defend yourself. They only need to be engaging in a course of action that causes you to reasonably believe they will imminently cause physical harm to you. You must be able to articulate facts and circumstances as to why; your personal subjective feeling by itself isn't enough. The actions the other person is doing might constitute disorderly conduct, menacing, aggravated menacing, assault, aggravatd assault, felonious assault, attempted murder, vehicular assault, attempted vehicular homicide, or a number of other crimes or attempted crimes depending on what exactly they were doing when you defended yourself.
The only difference between raising a fist at you and pointing a gun at you is the degree of force you can use to defend yourself, and in some cases you can even use lethal force against an empty-handed person, such as if they have a major physical advantage over you or if they outnumber you significantly. You just better be able to clearly articulate why later, and it had better make sense.