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Liberty; Law; Government; and the Constitution

Illegal Orders, Law, or Arrest can be Lawfully Resisted

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        "I was only following orders" is referred to as the "Nuremberg Defense". 

        As all those who were judged guilty for Crimes Against Humanity found out, "I was only following orders" is NOT a valid defense.  Brought to the world's attention then and there, is the concept that one has a moral and legal DUTY to disobey an illegal (immoral) order. 

        The "Nuremberg Defense" phrase could have just as easily been:
  • "We've always done it this way;"
  • "My boss said so;"
  • "It was the law."
        How many times do government employees justify their actions that are clearly violative of Unalienable Rights by stating:
  • "Because we've always done it this way";
  • "Because my boss said so";
  • "Because it's the law";
  • "I'm only following orders"
        News Flash for all government employees, agents, officers, and police officers!
        The Nuremberg concept says YOU are responsible just as if you chose to violate those rights on your own.  You can NOT indemnify yourself by putting the blame on others. IT WAS YOUR ACTION and YOUR action alone that violated the Unalienable Rights of the Citizen.

        If you attempt to arrest a Citizen when you have NO authority to do so, (like when a law has no authority), The Citizen is JUSTIFIED in resisting your attempts to arrest him.  How much force is the Citizen allowed to use in resisting your unlawful attempt at quashing his or her Liberty?  Keep reading.

JOHN BAD ELK v. U S, 177 U.S. 529 (1900)

It is plain from this review of the subject ... that the policemen had the right to arrest this plaintiff in error, without warrant, and that, in order to accomplish such arrest, they had the right to show and use their pistols so far as was necessary for that purpose, and that the plaintiff in error had no right to resist such arrest, was erroneous.

        Police have NO authority to arrest without a warrant, or direct observation of misdemeanor crimes.  Without authority, plaintiff was within plaintiff's rights to resist arrest.

That it was a material error, it seems to us, is equally plain. It placed the transaction in a false light before the jury, and denied to the plaintiff in error those rights which he clearly had.

        As the charges of the crime were given the jury by the lower court, the charges denied the plaintiff his right to resist unwarranted arrest.

The occasion of the trouble originated in Gleason's orders to arrest him, and in the announced intention on the part of the policemen, which they endeavored to accomplish, to arrest the plaintiff in error that night and take him to the agency, and all that followed that announcement ought to be viewed in the light of such proclaimed intention. And yet the charge presented the plaintiff in error to the jury as one having no right to make any resistance to an arrest by these officers, although he had been guilty of no offense, and it gave the jury to understand that the officers, in making the attempt, had the right to use all necessary force to overcome any and all opposition that might be made to the arrest, even to the extent of killing the individual whom they desired to take into their custody.

        The plaintiff was "guilty of no offense."

 Instead of saying that plaintiff in error had the right to use such force as was absolutely necessary to resist an attempted illegal arrest, the jury were informed that the policemen had the right to use all necessary force to arrest him, and that he had no right to resist.

        Plaintiff "had the right to use such force as was absolutely necessary to resist an attempted illegal arrest."  Force in resisting illegal arrest is justified if commensurate with the force  used in an attempt at illegal arrest.

 He, of course, had no right to unnecessarily injure, much less to kill, his assailant; but 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 such right.

        If the officer had no right (warrant) for the arrest, resisting arrest is not a crime.

 What might 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.

        If an officer uses enough force in an illegal arrest, killing an officer is justified.

The plaintiff in error was undoubtedly prejudiced by this error in the charge, and the judgment of the court below must therefore be reversed, and the case remanded with instructions to grant a new trial.

        The court did not instruct the jury properly upon the plantiff's right to resist illegal arrest.
     

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