As a criminal defense attorney, I have watched with great interest as the nation has been swept up in a variety of police brutality cases. Regardless of how you perceive the events that claimed the life of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, or more recently Walter Scott, you have to be avoiding the news to not see that more attention is being placed on the behavior of the police.  While there are many good police officers, that work hard to protect and defend there are also, clearly, officers that are in violation of the laws themselves.  This raises questions about the belief most citizens have of listening to the police and complying if they try to make an arrest.  In fact, more and more people are asking the question – am I entitled to resist arrest in the first place?

Constitutionally the answer is “yes.”

The Supreme Court ruled in Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. that “Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.”  While I am not advocating that any citizen take a life, police officer or otherwise, the Court’s ruling was clear.  As a United States citizen, you do have the right to resist arrest if that arrest is unlawful in the first place. This means that the officer needs to have a clear indication or belief that you have indeed committed a crime based on the evidence before them.  An additional ruling spelled it out more clearly, “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.

As a criminal defense attorney, the challenge is that most people who resist arrest end up arrested themselves and in the cases we have seen lately, some are even shot and killed.  This poses further questions because a person has to ask, what is better?  If you comply with the arrest, be it unlawful, there would seemingly be a reduced risk of being physically harmed by the police.  If, however, you resist, these cases have demonstrated the propensity of law enforcement to take it too far.  Knowing what to do is really a personal decision that has to be made in the moments leading up to the arrest and no one can make it for you.

However, if you do resist arrest because you feel that the arrest is unlawful and that you did not commit a crime, I can defend you. As a criminal defense attorney, I can make the case for why you were within your legal rights to resist and that you should be released from any charges of wrongdoing.  In order to do so, I need to get involved in the case as soon as possible and learn everything there is to know about the events leading up to the arrest along with what transpired during and afterwards.  Evidence will need to be gathered to demonstrate that the officer was acting outside of their legal jurisdiction.  If this has happened to you or someone you know, call right away to discuss the details of your case and to move forward with your defense.