Pokorny et al v. First Federal Savings & Loan, 382 So. 2d 678 (Fl. 1980)
The text you quoted does not say anything that means “only probable cause and actual belief that the arrestee is guilty.” Rather, it says something that means “and probable cause and actual belief that the arrestee is guilty.”
Okay, that all sounds right. I just don’t think it’s accurate to summarize your view as “all you need is probable cause.” All you need (so far as we know barring further decisions) is either commission of a felony or breach of peace in your presence, or commission of a felony or breach of peace plus probable cause, or a warrant.
“All you need is X” generally means “Everything that you need is either X, a logical implication of X, or some factor which the present context makes it appropriate to assume was understood as necessary even though it’s neither X nor an implication of X.” But the disjunctive phrase I just gave in the previous paragraph does not fit these criteria for “all you need is X.”
It’s like you’re giving him homework or something.
Since ehow was mentioned earlier:
Florida Citizen’s Arrest Laws
By Walter Johnson, eHow Contributor
http://www.fortheconsumer.com/article-citizens-arrest.htm
This isn’t saying that what Bricker said is inaccurate. He is not saying that probable cause is not legally sufficient. He is saying there is the risk that you might not be able to prove that you had probable cause if someone isn’t convicted.
There is a difference between when a cop makes an arrest and a private citizen makes an arrest.
Generally, all a cop needs is probable cause. If they have probable cause and it turns out that a crime was not committed, the arrest is still lawful because a commission of a crime is not a necessity for them to make an arrest.
A citizen, on the other hand, does not have that latitude. It is not enough that they merely have probable cause. If it turns out there was no crime committed, the citizen’s arrest because unlawful and they may be held liable.
I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to just admit that this what the law says.
As to the whole punch issue, i will concede that if the conflict began with Martin throwing the first punch rules out Zimmerman being the aggressor, this would be considered a crime. But declaring that its “perfectly legal” to respond to this punch with deadly force and then detain the person who has been shot and is bleeding all over the place, is not passing the reality test to me.
If this makes me an idiot, I am perfectly okay being called that. I will not be continuing the argument, though.
If this interpretation were true, cops would have the same worry, because they too need probable cause to make an arrest.
But cops don’t have that worry. Even if they arrest someone who doesn’t end up charged with a crime, let along convicted, they generally are in the clear.
If it’s bias to believe someone has the right to defend themselves, and to believe someone who says they were doing that absent evidence to the contrary, fine, I’m biased.
Bricker is a defence attorney. He grasps, unlike you, that morality is irrelevant to whether or not someone is guilty. The moral judgement has already been made when the law was framed, by the people of the State, and cannot, and should not, be gainsaid by a judge or jury*.
His biases do not make his factual statements false. Your biases, however, make your opinions irrelevant.
Following someone is not a threatening act. That is it, there is no question there. One is entitled to follow someone, and one may not reasonably infer threat from being followed. This issue is settled, and people need to stop claiming otherwise.
If, in the course of following someone, a separate threatening act takes place, the person threatened may defend themselves. But the following is irrelevant.
The only difference is that the citizen is liable for a civil suit, and the policeman isn’t (in their own jurisdiction). Otherwise, the rules are the same.
It’s difficult because it’s utterly false, and many people, including lawyers, have proven this to you. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for you to admit this.
You are indeed an idiot, and no-one is claiming that in any circumstance, or even any circumstance where one has the right to self defence, or even in all said circumstances in Florida, one may shoot someone.
What we are saying, correctly, is that when someone is in reasonable fear of serious bodily harm or death, they may shoot someone, and that when one has received such harm, and is still being attacked, they may reasonably have such fear.
Do you understand that distinction, or do I need to try again, for about the 347th time, perhaps with smaller words and pictures?
[quote=“you_with_the_face, post:247, topic:632106”]
In Florida, from a* legal*, technical standpoint, there is no difference between when a cop makes an arrest outside of his jurisdiction and a private citizen makes an arrest. The rules are the same.
In Florida, from a legal standpoint, the same thing is true for citizens as applied to felonies. In theory, all they need is probable cause for the belief, and the belief, that this person committed a felony.
In Florida, from a legal standpoint, the same thing is true for citizens (as applied to felonies.) In theory, all they need is probable cause for a belief that this person committed a felony.
In practice, if it turns out that the arrestee is not convicted of a crime, there is a reasonable chance that the arrestee will argue that you never had probable cause- (and therefore that the arrest was illegal, and that you should be held civilly (or even criminally) liable.
The burden is on the arrester to prove they had probable cause. In practice, a conviction of the arrestee makes this very easy. A lack of conviction leaves the arrester in a position where they may have to convince a judge or jury that they had probable cause.
Nonetheless, if they can demonstrate that they did indeed have a reasonable belief (meeting the burden of probable cause) that a felony had been committed by the arrestee, then it is a lawful arrest, whether or not it’s been determined that a crime was actually committed.
Because that is not what the law says in Florida. You just read from a website from a Florida attorney that specializes in this area of law. He almost literally said, “You With the Face, this is not what Florida law says.”
Of course. Anyone who arrests someone that’s not ultimately convicted is generally in the clear, *as long as probable cause was present. * This is what the Pokorny case tells us.
Cops are generally safe, though, even if it turns out they had no probable cause, because cops enjoy qualified immunity from civil liability for that kind of mistake. In order to successfully sue a private citizen for false arrest in Florida, you must show (among other elements) a lack of probable cause. (In other jurisdictions, you could win that suit by showing no actual crime – not in Florida).
But to sue a police officer, you would need to show both a lack of probable cause, AND that the officer violated clearly established law. For example, is it probable cause if a suspect sees the police and immediately starts running away? At one time, this was a hotly debated issue, with courts in different states ruling different ways. An officer might have arrested you claiming that running away was probable cause, and the courts may have ruled against him, voiding the arrest – but he is still immune from suit because he did not violate clearly established law.
That is a key difference between a private citizen arrest and a police officer arrest.
From the things you’ve quoted, it seems that if no crime was committed, a warrant is required. Does a warrant function simply as a way to document probable cause?
The warrant requirement applies only in certain situations, such as when a person is arrested at home.
Bricker quoted a decision that said a warrant would have helped constitute a valid citizen’s arrest taking place in a bank. Was one of the requirements you mention in effect in that case as well?
As I said earlier, (and as Bricker agreed,) what we seem to know right now is that a citizen’s arrest is permissible if:
A. A crime was committed by the arrestee in the citizen’s presence, or;
B. A crime was committed, and the citizen believed the arrestee committed it, or;
C. The citizen swore a warrant, and arrested the arrestee pursuant to that warrant.
If those are the only cases in which a citizen’s arrest is permissible (and I should note that it appears this is not settled in Florida courts, at least so far as anything quoted in this thread is concerned), then a warrant is required if no crime was committed.
If it is permissible in Florida for a citizen to arrest someone in a situation not fitting any of the three circumstances above, no one in this thread has quoted any legal language which would support that permissibility.
That’s not what Pokorny said. In fact, Pokorny didn’t involve a citizen’s arrest at all. In that case, the defendants had reported a crime and an arrest was made on the basis of their report. They didn’t arrest anyone themselves, but the court discussed a hypothetical warrant (and police arrest made based on it).
He brought up that case to illustrate how probable cause works as applied to a private citizen.
In a sense. It’s not true that the warrant requirement exists across the board: Florida law carves out when a warrantless arrest is authorized.
I hate to nitpick a promising and good discussion, but since glossed-over, albeit perfectly obvious, meanings can cause much ado – let’s be clear that in your option B, it’s not that the citizen believed it, but that he also had probable cause to believe it.
The lawyer said this:
You’ve glommed onto the sentences that came after this sentence, while I’ve glommed on to this one.
The lawyer that you’ve cited (thanks for doing that, by the way) is clearly telling the public that even if you know a felony was just committed, “founded suspicion” alone does not bestow you the right to detain the suspect. You would think that if probable cause alone was legally sufficient, he wouldn’t have put this sentence in here, as it clearly contradicts that notion.
When he says this:
The last sentence of the paragraph doesn’t logically follow from the first sentence. In the first, he’s talking about conviction, which assumes we’re past the indictment stage and have already established that probable cause for a crime exists (otherwise, a conviction wouldn’t even be under consideration). But in the last sentence, it sounds like he’s talking about prosecutors choosing not even to go after a person due to certain factors, which implies charges won’t be brought. These are two different things. One concerns the burden of proof necessary for a conviction and one concerns probable cause.
Once the state vouches for the existence of probable cause by pressing felony charges against the arrestee, why wouldn’t the arrester be legally in the clear at that point, if probable cause alone is legally sufficient for a citizen’s arrest?
Because probable cause for arrest is largely unrelated to whether grounds exist for a prosecution. The latter is a decision made on the basis of information available in a relatively short time frame which may or may not be open to verification. The latter is the opposite; a considered decision which takes into account numerous political considerations as well as legal ones, among much else.
This was in response to yftf’s post.
Grasp whatever thread you can. Case law is case law. Here, in absence of relevant statutes, we have case law–Florida case law.
From what I’ve read (and for fuck’s sake I’ve read the entire IMHO thread and here), based on Bricker’s hypothetical and Florida law, this is a non issue as you conceded the point after 5 pages of this nonsense.
You’ve gone off the rails as to this issue. If you want to drive home that you’re completely irrational and a nutter as to the Zimmerman thing, keep going. But at this point, it’s difficult to see whether this is an effort to prove you’re right and smarter and better than any lawyer on the board, or if this is because of your strong beliefs of the Zimmerman issue. In the beginning the latter appeared the case, now it appears to be based on the former. If so, you are channeling Stoid.
You don’t like lawyers, that’s clear, but truly, what we’re trained to do does have merit, and if you don’t like the judicial system, that’s OK, too. But within the system, you should probably defer to at least some of the lawyers (and perhaps Florida law students here).
For the record, looking at the evidence available, legally, Zimmerman will likely be innocent. What my personal, moral opinion of what should happen to him is irrelevant to this discussion. In this context, lawyer’s generally focus on legalities rather than moral issues.