ATTENTION: We are in no way affirming the right for citizens to take the life of law enforcement officer, what we are presenting is the simple fact that citizens DO HAVE the legal right to defend themselves against unlawful arrest up and including taking the life of an offending officer.

“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.”

“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 justified.” 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.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to
be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending
himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” (State v.
Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

“Each person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such a case,
the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and
may be resisted by the use of force, as in self- defense.” (State v.
Mobley, 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100).

“One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he
may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is
not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer,
even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.”
(Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

“Story affirmed the right of self-defense by persons held illegally. In
his own writings, he had admitted that ‘a situation could arise in which
the checks-and-balances principle ceased to work and the various branches
of government concurred in a gross usurpation.’ There would be no usual
remedy by changing the law or passing an amendment to the Constitution,
should the oppressed party be a minority. Story concluded, ‘If there be
any remedy at all … it is a remedy never provided for by human
institutions.’ That was the ‘ultimate right of all human beings in extreme
cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous
injustice.’” (From Mutiny on the Amistad by Howard Jones, Oxford
University Press, 1987, an account of the reading of the decision in the
case by Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court.

As for grounds for arrest: “The carrying of arms in a quiet, peaceable,
and orderly manner, concealed on or about the person, is not a breach of
the peace. Nor does such an act of itself, lead to a breach of the peace.”
(Wharton’s Criminal and Civil Procedure, 12th Ed., Vol.2: Judy v. Lashley,
5 W. Va. 628, 41 S.E. 197)