He’s clearly distinguishing between “probable cause” and "“founded suspicion”. Not being a lawyer of any sort, much less in Florida, I can’t be certain but I believe that by “founded suspicion” he means what I know as “reasonable suspicion” , a lower standard than probable cause.
And a person could still have probable cause even if the prosecutor doesn’t believe there is enough evidence for a conviction and therefore declines prosecution.
That would be true, if the fact of pressing charges alone defined probable cause. But it doesn’t. At some point, before or after arrest, the state is going to establish that there was probable cause. Perhaps by a grand jury indictment, or a preliminary hearing or by the defendant conceding that there was probable cause. But it’s possible for a person can to be arrested and a court proceeding later determines that there was no probable cause.
IANAL, but I would guess that “founded suspicion” means suspicion that has a foundation (as opposed to “the guy looked slimy”). (I agree with your general point.)
Actually, I think the website was saying something else, and this is what confused YWTF. The guy made the following points:
If the case goes to trial and the guy is acquitted he may sue the arrestor (who might win that case, but still have the hassle and expense of a lawsuit).
What about a case in which the evidence of guilt is overwhelming. So the risk of acquital is low. But even there, the prosecutors might decide not to charge altogether for reasons unrelated to evidence of guilt (e.g. “prior record, their lack of resources or for other reasons”) so that the evidence of guilt never gets presented, and the arrestee sues for false arrest (& again, the citizen arrestor has the hassle of a lawsuit).
Because sometimes the state vouches for the existence of probable cause by filing charges and it doesn’t exist.
But a final conviction solves the issue: if there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, then there was definitely probable cause.
you with the face: you seem very confident that you, untrained in the law, can reach the right answer here just by reading the information that appears in various resources.
Do you think I could teach myself to be a veterinarian by reading some similar resources? Could any reasonably bright person do the level of reading you have here and be qualified to answer medical questions about an animal?
And to re-ask a question that I posed a while back – why do you suppose the answers you’ve gotten here have been so uniform? Your first reply mentioned political leanings as one reason lawyers might respond so uniformly against your view, but the lawyers that have posted here have included people that are most definitely liberal, and have most definitely not hesitated to disagree with me and beat me down on other issues.
Why are everyone (except monstro) here in this thread all telling you you’re wrong?
Sure – in that case, the burden of proving the existence of probable cause would be on the citizen who did the arresting. A warrantless arrest is presumptively unreasonable. The person doing the arresting must show that he had probable cause.
If he can’t, then the arrest is void and the citizen liable for damages.
In contrast, the burden of proving the existence of probable cause is also on the police officer who did the arresting. A warrantless arrest by an officer is also presumptively unreasonable. The officer doing the arresting must show that he had probable cause.
But if he can’t, the arrest is void, but the officer is shielded by qualified immunity. He is only liable if the arrested person can show that the arrest violated clearly established law.
FTR, I agree with you that it’s silly for a lay person to insist that all lawyers are wrong about the law. That said, I would play a bit of Devil’s Advocate and note that your comparison is invalid.
Vetinary science is highly obscure, and does not really affect the lives of most people. Most people have virtually no exposure to it at all. By contrast, law is extremely pervasive and affects everyone to some degree or another, is a tremendous focus of society at large, and is the subject of tremendous interest from many many people.
The average lay person is far better educated on the law and basic legal concepts than they are about vetinary science.
Again, that’s not to say you’re wrong here. But if someone mistakenly thought you were wrong, I don’t think your comparison should convince them.
I’m not sure if you understood me correctly. I was not asking a question, but was explaining the intention of the website that YWTF quoted in post #258.
I count two things a person has to have, not one. The first is probable cause, and the second is the belief the person is guilty of a felony.
If probable cause was sufficient by itself, the author wouldn’t have bothered to cite two must-haves. He would have cited one: probable cause.
I think your interpretation is correct.
An arrest is not synonymous with an indictment, though, so this is a red herring. For a charge to be pressed against someone, there must be enough evidence of a crime to support that, right? So if someone is charged with felony battery and it goes to trial but there’s no conviction, I don’t see how there could be question that there wasn’t any probable cause. That threshold was met when the judge accepted the affidavit or whatever.
The author of that piece implies that if charges are pressed against the arrestee and it goes to trial but there’s a not guilty verdict (i.e. no conviction) then the arrestee could argue there wasn’t probable cause. All I’m saying is I don’t see how they could argue that when the state already had to make a case for probable cause when charges were pressed.
Not at all. There are several steps in the legal process designed to ensure that the standard of probable cause is met before a trial commences, but they are not bulletproof.
The existence of probable cause is a matter of law. Just because a trial court finds probable cause does not make that determination binding on an appeals court. They review that finding de novo – anew, with no particular deference to the trial court’s finding.
You are saying that the state sometimes charges someone with a crime even though they don’t have probable cause. Is this lawful?
Please spare me this. We aren’t talking about knowledge here. We are talking about how to present and interpret words precisely and honestly. Frylock is exactly right. When you say “probable cause of a felony is all you need to make a citizen’s arrest” but the reality is that every cite containing the legal language couples the probable cause requirement with something else, that makes you guilty of oversimplication and sloppiness.
This thread would have been unnecessary if you hadn’t dropped a turd of a hypothetical in that other thread just to negate my point about Zimmerman’s conduct post-shooting. When he shot the kid, he immediately leaped up and restrained him. But he wasnt making a citizen’s arrest. He didn’t ever identify himself to the kid or explain why he was detaining him, which strongly suggests this move of his unlawful. I strongly suspect it was be his undoing at trial too.
Your lawyerly expertise would have been better spent on clarifying the legality if this aspect of this case, rather than hijacking the discussion with a scenario that has no bearing on what actually occurred. I am only sorry that I joined you on that hijack.
No. If they are acquitted, that means the state couldn’t prove each and every element of the charged crime beyond a reasonable doubt – a very high standard.
Probable cause just means that there’s enough information to warrant a reasonably cautious person to believe that the accused is probably guilty – a much lower standard.
We would expect to find many situations in which there was probable cause, but not enough evidence to convict.
What’s the other thing – the “something else” that’s necessary beyond probable cause?
I mean, sure, I failed to make clear that you had to have a person to do the arresting, and he had to have a mind, and that mind had to believe he had probable cause. Those are things that are, in my view, so inextricably tied into the general statement that I don’t need to explicitly state them. We must be talking about Florida, in this time period. We must be discussing human beings. We must be talking about real people and not fictional characters. All those are “something else.”
Well, my hypothetical imagined the bullet missing Martin, so, yeah, I wasn’t trying to say that Zimmerman was actually executing a citizen’s arrest. I was saying, correctly, that if the conflict began with Martin punching Zimmerman, continued to Zimmerman shooting Martin, and if the bullet had merely grazed Martin, following which Zimmerman had leapt upon him and restrained him for the purposes of a citizen’s arrest… That would have been perfectly legal, both for a police officer and a “regular schmoe.”
