Muffin, please answer true or false to the following questions.
A citizen can arrest another person if they have probable cause that a felony was committed, and that is all.
Being punched in the face always constitutes felony battery, rather than a misdemeanor or justified use of non-deadly force in response to provocation.
It’s always legal to respond with gunfire after you’ve been punched in the face.
Once you shoot someone and have injured them, it’s always legal to detain them until the cops show up.
If you’ve answered “false” to one or more of the questions above, then you agree with me that Bricker is wrong. If you don’t answer “false” then you won’t have to worry about me engaging you any further.
I’m trying to keep things reaaaaaaaly simple here.
It really is the case that in this country a person is permitted to respond to even the threat of serious bodily injury with deadly force (assuming the other circumstances warranting self-defense are met). And it is also the case that absent unusual circumstances a blow to the face from a fist presents the threat of serious bodily injury. I imagine using a nuclear warhead would breach a number of other laws, but the impropriety of its use would not be a problem of proportionality. You don’t have to take my word for it, but I also don’t feel like laying out the case law for you.
That said, I take your point to be my frequent use of phrases like “absent unusual circumstances” and “assuming the other circumstances warranting self-defense are met” in my previous paragraph. You’re saying that a Court has to weigh those circumstances before we know whether the retaliatory force was legal. But the point you’re making is either pedantic or wrong, depending on what precisely you intend.
If you’re just saying that we don’t know that self-defense is legal until a court says so, then you’re right. That would be a very **Brickerian **point to make, if I do say so myself. And a pedantic one. If you’re saying that we cannot assert the general legal principle that a punch to the face justifies lethal force because there could always be some circumstance that changes the facts, then you’re right again. If my hands are made of silly putty because of a freak genetic mutation, then you aren’t in reasonable fear of serious bodily harm from my punch. But again, this is a pedantic point, since it is only under these unusual circumstances that a punch wouldn’t count.
If you’re saying that whether the punch justifies self-defense turns on whether it was provoked, whether the shooter had an obligation to retreat, etc., then you’re right, but missing the point because the debate is over only one aspect of the self-defense issue–whether the punch justifies deadly retaliation. That is not the only element, of course. But the existence or non-existence of other elements does not change that element. And so we can safely assert as to that element, absent extraordinary circumstances (which were definitely not present in the Martin/Zimmerman case or your hypo), a punch justifies a shot.
Finally, your position that “the citizen’s arrest needs to lead to formal arrest to be lawful” is almost certainly wrong. I guess you’re getting that from the requirement of a felony, and then inferring that a felony must be proven in a criminal court based on a criminal indictment. But your inference is incorrect. I can’t cite you a case, because no court has ever been asked to consider that position. But I can tell you that it is commonplace to require proof that a crime was committed as part of the elements of some other legal issue, and this does not require there to have been a criminal trial.
It’s not pedantic at all. Saying it’s legal to shoot someone if they punch you is about as gross of an oversimplication as you can get. Why would we automatically assume that the necessary conditions for self-defense are present, just for the sake of saying it’s perfectly legal to use deadly force in response to a punch? In some cases, it might legal. In other cases, it’ll get you sent to prison. If this wasn’t the case Zimmerman in all likelihood wouldn’t be charged with a crime right now.
You’d only have a point if genetic mutations like this were as common as people going to prison for unjustified use of force.
I respectfully submit that if your point is that self-defense turns on factors other than the fact that someone punches or attempts to punch another, then no one has understood you to be making this point. If that’s really it, then this is all a big miscommunication. I promise that **Bricker **does not disagree with that point.
You could provide a cite that the commission of buffalo sodomy could lead to a citizen’s arrest…still doesn’t change the basic issue that a private citizen needs more than just probable cause to lawfully arrest someone. Maybe you could get around to conceding that sometime before 2015.
That’s why it’s very difficult to communicate when you aren’t trying to construe the other side’s position as charitably as possible. If you reach the point when you think “geez, how does a lawyer not understand that self-defense requires proof of multiple elements,” then you should stop to consider whether what’s actually happening is that either you or the lawyer is being misunderstood.
IMHO, if you get it into your head that the poster you’re communicating with is a no-good jack-ass, then it becomes really hard to understand the correct meaning of his posts. Useful communication in the debate context absolutely requires charitable interpretation.
It was at this point that I realized how hopelessly out to lunch you are on this. Your responses are entirely from the perspective of antipathy and adversarialism, not logic. **I realize you are no longer able to perceive this, but it is so. **
You really need to get away from this issue. I am really, honestly pleading with you to back away and get something else to do. You’re starting to sound like… well, like a nut case, to be quite honest. Please, please stop posting about this and find something else to spend your time on.
If the private citizen had probable cause to believe the person was committing a felony or a breach of the peace, then I do not agree that the arrest would be illegal.
I think he only ‘followed’ him in the sense that he was walking to where he last saw him (at the top of the “T”) to see where he had gone so he could tell the dispatcher. I don’t think he ever intended to do anything beyond that (even if the dispatcher had not said anything to him.)
I also don’t believe he intended to question him personally. If he had, then he could have rolled down his window when he was near his truck and done so. Plus, in other calls, he said he didn’t want to approach the people.
I generally accept his narrative of how the encounter began especially since the prosecution has admitted to having no compelling evidence to contradict it.
(He had been put in the hospital by this kid before, so it’s not an entirely straight-forward case of a punch being upheld as grounds for lethal self-defense.) But it’s interesting nonetheless.
Returning to Bricker, his knowledge of law may be competent but he annoys by his continual attempts to bamboozle. He’ll call a poster on a logic fallacy, but make the very same fallacy in another context when it serves his prejudice. He cites statistics that he knows are misleading or irrelevant just to score “debating points.” I usually just skip his posts now since the disinformation content is so high; that’s a shame since I think he does have knowledge he could contribute.
I was startled to read that he “used to be a public defender.” I associated public defenders with compassion or altruism, while Bricker’s politics are clearly of the “I got mine, suckers. Fuck you!” school. Can Dopers familiar with Bricker’s past elucidate? Did dealing with underclass criminals confuse him into thinking the entire underclass is criminal? (I’d ask Bricker himself for an answer if he could constrict his sphincter long enough to avoid snark, contempt and lies.)
It would be illegal if the “felony” that was being committed was actually someone defending themselves against a perceived assailant. In the absence of a crime truly being committed, the arrest becomes unlawful.
Double bad points if the perceived assailant was actually the dude doing the arresting.
Richard has faulted me for not bending over backgrounds to interpret your spewings in the most charitable way possible. But lawyers should be good about expressing themselves in as precise and accurate manner as possible, lest their words be picked up and used by a literal-thinking layman in way that is harmful to society. You are not very good at that.
