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YOUR RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE

"Citizens may resist UNLAWFUL arrest to the point of taking an arresting 
officer's life if necessary." PLUMMER V. STATE, 136 Ind. 306.  This 
premise was upheld by the SUPREME COURT of the United States in the 
case: JOHN BAD ELK V. U.S., 177 U.S. 529.  The Court stated: "Where 
the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally 
accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with
very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the 
right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no 
right.  What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more 
than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no 
offense had been committed."

"An arrest made with a defective warrant, or one issued without 
affidavit, or one that fails to allege a crime is within jurisdiction,
and one who is being arrested, may resist arrest and break away. lf the 
arresting officer is killed by one who is so resisting, the killing 
will be no more than an involuntary manslaughter." HOUSH V. PEOPLE, 
75 111. 491; reaffirmed and quoted in State v. Leach, 7 Conn. 452; 
State v. Gleason, 32 Kan. 245; Ballard v. State, 43 Ohio 349; 
State v Rousseau, 241 P. 2d 447; State v. Spaulding, 34 Minn. 3621.

"When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right 
to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by 
force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense,
his assailant is killed, he is justiciable." RUNYAN v. STATE, 57 Ind. 80;
Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1. "These principles apply as well to an officer
attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the
bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do 
to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence." 
JONES v. STATE, 26 Tex.  App.  I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex.  App. 1 75;
Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

 
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(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Patriot Archives FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the
Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)


