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Help me figure out if this urban legend is true...

1337m4n said:
It pains me to think of anyone who would propagate such a dangerous belief in order to advance their own political agenda.
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Hold your horses. This myth isn't totally busted. I have not been able to find the full Plumer decision online.

I would not at all be surprised if the decision did in fact include the sentence: "Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer's life if necessary." The statement is true; but the important word is MAY. Which means there is at least one possible scenario under which a citizen may resist arrest. It would be wrong to interpret that as a wide sweeping statement of law that all citizens in all circumstances can resist arrest that the citizen believes to be unlawful. It would have been just a small part of the decision and dependent on the other circumstances in the case. You have to take such statements in context.

I also would not at all be surprised if the propagation of the quote originates from constitution.org. I’ve looked into a number of their other quotes and found that they are all taken out of context and don’t really mean what you would initially think they mean.

Also note that unlawful arrest has very little to do with the Plummer case. It was a case of unnecessary force. Even if you are not doing anything wrong, you cannot resist arrest. If you do NOT resist, and the police officer starts beating on you or shooting at you, that’s when you can defend yourself. And that only means a case where you are facing great bodily harm of death. And you can only act in defense, not retaliation.

Here’s a quote from the link I gave above:

In Fields, the issue before the court was whether any amount of force should be used by one unlawfully but peaceably arrested. The court stated that the common law rule allowing a person to resist an unlawful but peaceful arrest is outmoded because it tends to escalate violence. The court further stated that “[a] citizen, today, can seek his remedy for a policeman’s unwarranted and illegal intrusion into the citizen’s private affairs by bringing a civil action in the courts against the police officers and the governmental unit which the officer represents.” Therefore, the court held that “although [Field’s] initial arrest was unlawful, he was not entitled to forcefully resist [the arresting officer’s] attempt to apprehend him.”
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See? You cannot resist. Don’t resist. Take it up in the courts.

Here’s a decent summary:
Indiana adheres to the general rule allowing an arrestee to resist the arrester’s use of excessive force by the use of reasonable force to protect himself against great bodily harm or death.
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You cannot resist arrest. However, if you have your hands in the air a cop starts punching you for no reason, you can punch back. If you robbed a bank and get pulled over and the cop has you spread eagle on your car and backs away and starts taking pot shots at you with his pistol, you can grab a gun and fire back. The officer has crossed the line of performing his duty as a police officer to a violent criminal. But you only have a right to defend if the actions are serious enough to cause great bodily harm or death. Otherwise, you should defend your rights with arguments in court rather than fisticuffs on the street.

The real bottom line is: You don’t have a right to assault a police officer unless the officer just comes up and starts wailing on you or shooting at you.
 
This sounds similar to the recent UK debate over possible clarification of the laws pertaining to self-defence on one's own property. There is a perception that if you act to defend yourself against an intruder, you are just as likely (if not more) to face punishment as the criminal. In fact I don't think that's the case; calls have to be made on the available evidence as to how justified the force, and the level of force, was. So if you are physically attacked in your own home and respond with whatever's to hand, you're fine. If you say, grab a flashlight and brain a burglar as he breaks in, you'll probably still be fine. If however, you chase a burglar out of your house and shoot them in the back with an illegally held weapon, killing them, then the courts are likely to frown upon it. The same process, I imagine, applies here - if it's determined that the police had no grounds for forceful arrest and you injure one in self-defence, you're OK. I agree that the bias in favour of the policeman is going to be difficult to overcome, but the OP has to be essentially an urban myth, or at least a real stretch of what the (old) law actually says. It's still more true to say than for example the old chestnut that you can supposedly shoot a Welshman with a bow and get away with it - as with the arrest "law" there may be a law stating something similar, but there are other laws and factors to consider that may take precedence.
 
leftysergeant said:
I kind of take that to mean that if a cop starts whacking you with his baton when he had no probable cause to detain you, and you take it away and bash his brains out with it, you are probably within your rights of self-defense.
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Well.. no. A self defense argument would only work up to the point you disarmed the person. Once you have disarmed them - it is no longer self defense.

In dealing with an appointed peace office an ordinary citizen would, in all likelihood, need to have some stitches, some gore, some pictures of heavy bruising and preferably some eye witnesses in order to show that excessive force was being used and that the victim was in fear of his or her life. Peace Officers are given the authority to use appropriate force to achieve compliance - it is a bit different for them than for a normal citizen. For example - if I ask you move away from my car I have no legal authority to use any force at all to achieve compliance unless you were damaging it in some way. A Peace Office could ask you and could, if you refused to move, push you away from the car. If you resist the officer you could be the subject of a further shove or restraint and arrest. Should you resist the arrest you could be subject to physical enforcement.

Demonstrating and proving that a peace officer went beyond that would be difficult to prove.
 
There are documented cases where unarmed civilians defended themselves with violence, against unlawful arrest, and were not charged with a crime. But there was video and other evidence that showed the Police acting in an unlawful manner.
 
robinson said:
There are documented cases where unarmed civilians defended themselves with violence, against unlawful arrest, and were not charged with a crime. But there was video and other evidence that showed the Police acting in an unlawful manner.
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...and if you read the post above your last one, he says (bolding mine)
"In dealing with an appointed peace office an ordinary citizen would, in all likelihood, need to have some stitches, some gore, some pictures of heavy bruising and preferably some eye witnesses in order to show that excessive force was being used..."
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which, at least in my world, is pretty close to the same thing.
 
This is a complicated issue. Defining "unlawful" is an important first step. And this varies from State to State, as well as countries. But lets look at some actual facts on this matter

Tennessee statutes - 39-11-611.

Self-defense.

(e) The threat or use of force against another is not justified to resist a halt at a roadblock, arrest, search, or stop and frisk that the person knows is being made by a law enforcement officer, unless:

(1) The law enforcement officer uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest, search, stop and frisk, or halt; and

(2) The person reasonably believes that the force is immediately necessary to protect against the law enforcement officer's use or attempted use of greater force than necessary.

-------------------------

39-16-602. Resisting stop, frisk, halt, arrest or search - Prevention or obstruction of service of legal writ or process.

(a) It is an offense for a person to intentionally prevent or obstruct anyone known to the person to be a law enforcement officer, or anyone acting in a law enforcement officer's presence and at such officer's direction, from effecting a stop, frisk, halt, arrest or search of any person, including the defendant, by using force against the law enforcement officer or another.

(b) Except as provided in § 39-11-611, it is no defense to prosecution under this section that the stop, frisk, halt, arrest or search was unlawful.

------------------

39-16-603. Evading arrest.

(2) It is a defense to prosecution under this subsection (a) that the attempted arrest was unlawful.

(b) (1) It is unlawful for any person, while operating a motor vehicle on any street, road, alley or highway in this state, to intentionally flee or attempt to elude any law enforcement officer, after having received any signal from such officer to bring the vehicle to a stop.

(2) It is a defense to prosecution under this subsection (b) that the attempted arrest was unlawful.

http://iweb.tntech.edu/cpardue/tca.html
 
It is known by LEOs, Judges, lawyers and such, that there is a right to defend against illegal activities by the police. But this knowledge is not spread around, for the reason that we don't want real criminals to know about it.
Such statutes and legal rights would only give them more ammo against the system.
 
So the bottom line seems to be that one does not have the right to resist arrest simply because one has done nothing wrong or because the arrest is otherwise unlawful, because these issues are properly decided by a court and not in the street, but one is not obligated to submit to violent physical abuse or unjustified force by the police and can legally defend themself if they engage in it.

That seems like a reasonable balance to me. Am I missing something here?
 
I can't seem to find the story at the moment, but there was a very recent incident (I think in Florida) where an off-duty cop had an incident of rage rage and approached a family in an SUV with his gun drawn. Unfortunately for the officer, the driver had a concealed weapons permit and was carrying at the time.

The cop was killed.

Not only was the guy not charged with any crime, but they actually returned his gun to him... which is awesome. :cool:
 
There was a case in Wyoming IIRC where a man shot a Park Ranger/Game Warden and a Deputy Sheriff, because they approached him with guns drawn. He killed both men and was found to have acted in self-defense, but was still convicted of the charges that the two were coming to arrest him for. He later escaped from prison. There was a TV-movie about it.
 
Well, if one thing's for certain, it's that there is no blanket answer to this. I guess you have to analyze it case-by-case and with respect to the particular laws of the state or city.

I guess, then, I should rephrase the original question:

Under federal and Constitutional rule, is there a right to resist unlawful arrest? If so, can you do so with force?
 
Along the same lines as this, I am curious if anyone knows how the natural instinct of "fight or flight" comes into play during an arrest? It seems counter intuitive for the human animal to play possum, which is essentially what is required of you when you see the cherries in the rear view.
 
1337m4n said:
For the time being, however, it appears that the idea that you can resist unlawful arrest with lethal force is exactly like every other belief that rebellious Emo kids hold, i.e. completely made up. Would someone care to prove me wrong?
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It isn't about proving someone wrong, it is about discovering the truth.
 
3bodyproblem said:
Along the same lines as this, I am curious if anyone knows how the natural instinct of "fight or flight" comes into play during an arrest? It seems counter intuitive for the human animal to play possum, which is essentially what is required of you when you see the cherries in the rear view.
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Fight or flight is an inter-species response. Given that the police officer is the same species (assumable) as the arrestee, the response would be a "posture or submit" response.

The law, weapons, flashing lights, uniform, etc... are all part of the police officers posturing, designed to establish their dominance over the arrestee.

-Gumboot
 
It seems clear to me the law does not permit you to resist an unlawful arrest. It allows you to use force to protect yourself from excessive use of force by a police officer. Those are not the same thing at all.

Thus, if an arrest (unlawful or otherwise) does not use excessive force, you have no right to resist. However, if the arrest (unlawful or otherwise) does use excessive force, you have the right to resist the excessive force (but not the arrest).

-Gumboot
 
Gumboot: Sounds logical. But when you see the video of people fleeing, in an obvious no win situation, you have to wonder if this isn't an instinctual response.
 
3bodyproblem said:
Gumboot: Sounds logical. But when you see the video of people fleeing, in an obvious no win situation, you have to wonder if this isn't an instinctual response.
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I disagree. I think it's entirely conscious and chosen as a response. People who run from police do so generally because they know they have done something wrong, and don't want to get caught. That has nothing to do with instinct - social laws have nothing to do with instinctive behaviour. It's a learned response.

As evidence, in New Zealand we changed our policy on police chases so that police would abandon them if excessive speeds were reached. As a result of this policy, fatal crashes from high speed chases are more frequent because people think if they just drive fast enough the police will let them go.

If the flee response were instinctive rather than calculated, there would not have been an increase is people fleeing.

-Gumboot
 
Gumboot: Yah I kinda agree with what your saying, but there only one thing, I knew a guy who served 7 years for fleeing in California (they threw the book at him). He was the nicest guy you ever met, but when he had been drinking and was in this situation, the little voice that tells you to pull over, doesn't exist. He just reacted, and his reaction was to flee. I think it had a lot to do with his being intoxicated as well, because as a sober person he would not have done that. But I don't think, at least in this case, it was calculated.
In a very similar manner, i know people who, when frightened run like mad, and others who will take a swing at you. Most people will run, most. But in a very few people the natural response it attack. Im not sure if this extends to police pursuit either, but it is an interesting aspect of human behaviour.

Anyways sorry for the derail/off topic from the OP.
 
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