Can you explain to me how you reached this conclusion?
For example, when you say, “The arrest becomes unlawful,” what do you mean? The person doing the arresting has committed a crime? The person doing the arresting has committed a tort, a civil wrong, for which he could be sued?
Because of what the law says. If probable cause was the the only necessary requirement for a citizen’s arrest then the statutute wouldn’t have needed to mention all those other pesky details about a crime being committed.
Also, if a person only needed probable cause to make a lawful arrest, then that would make them no different than a cop. Since we already know cops are given latitude in making arrests that civilians are not, it logically follows that the necessary conditions for a citizen arrest will be stiffer than a police one.
It means if a citizen arrests me because they think I’m breaking into my sister’s home when the real issue is that I’m a guest who simply got locked out, even if they had probable cause, the arrest would be unlawful. Meaning, I could sue them or they could be charged with false imprisonment or battery.
To go back to your hypothetical, if Zimmerman detained Martin for the “crime” of punching him, this arrest would become unlawful if a judge, after listening to both sides, determined that no crime had been committed. Zimmerman would then be vulnerable to being charged with a crime himself.
You’re wasting your time, Bricker. She’s a Stoid who is certain in her understanding and application of the law, and there is nothing any number of lawyers can do to change that.
Bah. So instead of a “Why we hate Bricker” thread #4238, this has become “Zimmerman - right or wrong?” thread #4238.
you with the face, much as I love your username, you are not coming across particularly well here. Cut your losses and go back to the other threads on the Zimmerman case, say I.
Does it worry you, or give you any pause at all, to see that no lawyer posting to this thread is endorsing this view?
I mean, you’ve read some sources and are convinced you’ve got the accurate take on this issue. Forget anything I am saying. Why do you imagine that other lawyers, or a current paralegal and law student in Florida, also are saying you’re mistaken?
To be ultra-clear, you COULD sue, but you could not establish all the elements of the tort of false imprisonment. You could sue for battery, but as long as the battery involved was incidental to the arrest, you would also be unable to prevail.
Citizen’s arrest in Florida is identical to arrest by law enforcement officers in Florida insofar as needing probable cause. A citizen’s arrest that is supported by probable cause is not illegal even if ultimately there is insufficient proof of a crime to convict.
Richard Parker is a lawyer, and he is certainly not a slavish devotee to the Cult of Bricker. Can you imagine any reason he would fail to correct any mistakes I have made in the above?
ywtf, you need to learn what “probable cause” means. It is, in brief, the standard of proof needed to justify an arrest - that is, if we know that a felony has been committed and that the person arrested committed it to the standard of probable cause, it’s legal.
I was incorrect earlier, when I said that no felony needs to have been committed, but my point was that we do not need to know to the point of beyond reasonable doubt that one has been.
Citizens have basically the same rights of arrest as policemen. The reason citizens arrests are discouraged is that most citizens, as ywtf has so eloquently demonstrated, have not a fucking clue what those rights are.
To refer this back to the Zimmerman case, if someone has punched you in the face and broken your nose, you have, absent knowledge that no crime was committed*, the absolute right to detain that person. Further, under Florida law, if after having inflicted great bodily harm upon you that person doesn’t clearly and believably indicate to you their intent to stop the fight, you have the right to shoot them.
*Say, the knowledge that you started the fight, and that the person who punched you was acting in self defence.
I didn’t see exactly what you said, but you may not have been wrong. In Florida, citizen’s arrest for a “breach of the peace” is permitted even if it’s not a felony.
For what it is worth at this point this post seems to be the origin of the conflict (at least according to monstroback in Post #86).
Wrong.
Not even sure why I bother, but wrong.
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… That would have been perfectly legal, both for a police officer and a “regular schmoe.”
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I took it as monstro saying that under no circumstances was it right for Zimmerman to attempt to restrain Martin after shooting him, and Bricker showing an instance where it could be. Both being quite dismissive about it. After that the whole thing unraveled into moving goal posts and specific instances. With each side try to be “right”.
But the hypothetical you and Bricker have been discussing presupposes that Martin did punch Zimmerman. It doesn’t take a lawyer to recognize that punching someone in the face is a crime.
[QUOTE=ywtf]
Do you think it’s a given that a single punch to the face, possibly triggered by reasonable fear after being pursued in the dark, would be prosecuted as a felony?
[/QUOTE]
Whether or not a felony conviction is pursued is not determinative of whether a felony is prosecuted, merely that it occurred. In any event, the crime triggering arrest does not have to be a felony. It need only be a breach of the peace.
No. The cops don’t determine whether probable cause exists for someone else to arrest. That’s a magistrate’s job.
I think you are being tripped up by the warrant issue. The warrant requirement was discussed in Collins, the case Richard Parker cited, because the defendant there was arrested in his home. The Fourth Amendment generally requires that a warrant is required to arrest someone in their own home. There is no general requirement for a warrant to arrest someone in public; the only requirement is probable cause that a breach of the peace has occurred and the arrestee perpetrated it.
Courts presume that warrantless searches are unlawful, and the state has the burden of proving that some exception to the warrant requirement applies. There is no such presumption regarding warrantless arrests, except in certain specific situations which are not present in the Martin/Zimmerman scenario. Thus, the requirement addressed in Collins that the arresting person must be able to prove the arrestee committed the felony does not apply.
In any event, the fact that an arrest was unlawful does not necessarily mean that a crime was committed by the person making the arrest. It does not necessarily mean that the person is liable in tort. It may mean only that a conviction which rests on that arrest is void.
You have failed to demonstrate that this is the case. You cited California law, and then simply asserted that it was good for Florida too.
OK. Let’s let others weigh on this:
Is that a correct statement of the law? Are the powers of a regular schmoe and a law enforcement officer different in those circumstances in Florida? If Martin started the conflict by punching Zimmerman in the nose, Zimmerman shoots Martin, the bullet grazes him, and then Zimmerman restrains Martin in an exercise of citizen’s arrest, would it be a false arrest under Florida law?
I’ll let others here analyze this.
Better yet, of a crime.
Not sure how this sentence showed up like this, but it’s supposed to say “whether or not a felony is prosecuted is not determinative; it’s merely whether it occurred.”
Though the specific post that Bricker responded to was monstro’s, I think it really got started with this post where you with the face is arguing that Zimmerman can not use a self-defense claim because he escalated the conflict by restraining Martin after he shot him.
No not really. I don’t put a lot in what lawyers have to say, because many of them will say different things depending on their political leanings, what cause they are trying to advance, their intelligence level, and their general level of arrogant jackassity.
Since we’ve gotten your desperate little appeal to authority out of the way, how about you prove I’m wrong by citing the law? Please post the language which authorizes a citizen to arrest another solely off of probable cause, and I will not argue with you anymore. This sounds like it should be very easy to do, Bricker. I’ve supported my assertion that a crime has to be committed, but you have provided nothing to support your assertion. I will even concede that a breach of the peace counts as qualifying offense.
The clause in bold insults the reader’s intelligence, since the battery would not be incidental if the act of being grabbed and detained is what is being called unlawful. Your attempt at saving face through disclaimers has been noted, though.
The arrest doesn’t become unlawful just because there isn’t a conviction. But it does become unlawful if no formal arrest is made due to the finding that no crime was committed. In the case of Martin punching Zimmerman, this could certainly have occurred if a judge had eyeballed the evidence and determined the punch had been provoked by the circumstances leading up to it.
You need to cite your claim that citizens arrest in Fl is identical to arrest by law enforcement. Showing this would go a long way in proving your point.
Yeah, lawyers can’t be trusted to discuss the law. Good thing we have the National Review, the fairest source of all!
It could be a crime, or it could be considered justified use of force. It is hardly black and white that a punch automatically equals a crime. Let alone a felony or even a breach a peace.
Spraying someone with pepper spray can be considered a crime given certain circumstances. A co-worker of mine was once being followed by a homeless guy in a parking garage. He kept asking her for money. She was frightened and pulled out her mace. She pointed it at him. If he’d kept advancing towards her and she sprayed him, would this be a crime? Probably not.
You are right, it doesn’t. That is up to the judicial system to determine by reviewing the relevant facts. Similarly, we can’t say a punch is a crime either.
OK. Just to be clear, you are asking me to show that a private citizen, who believes, and believes with probable cause, that a felony has been committed by a particular person, and who performs a citizen’s arrest on that person… cannot later be successfully sued for false arrest if a jury subsequently determines that no crime had been in fact committed?
I agree.
We don’t want this thread to hijack the 5,400-post thread that’s already going on in IMHO. I was hoping to see that thread get to 10,000 posts, but if this one keeps going then it’s unlikely to happen.
Here’s the sentence I used for the hypothetical:
That hypothetical doesn’t just presuppose Martin punching Zimmerman. It presupposes that the conflict began with Martin punching Zimmerman. How is that not a breach of peace? If his punch was in response to some provocation, then the provocation is what begins the conflict.
At least two of the lawyers posting in this thread are quite liberal. And “appeal to authority” isn’t a fallacy when you are actually appealing to an authority on the subject at hand. If I say: Einstein agrees with you on the citizens arrest thing, that’s an appeal to authority fallacy since Einstein is not an authority on the law, but an authority on physics. If I say Einstein disagrees with your theory of how the universe was formed, that is not a fallacy.
I’m pretty sure you know that, so I’m still uncertain why you are hand-waving away the actual authorities here.