Intent to commit the act which constitutes a crime is separate from knowledge of whether the act is a crime, Dio.
The question is whether they knew they were resisting arrest. I’ll wait to hear Bricker’s (or any other attorney’s) response to this.
A good question.
But let’s keep in mind where we are, procedurally. The cop’s actions in forcing open the door to effectuate the arrest for the crime of resisting arrest are valid, because he only needs probable cause to believe that the crime of resisting arrest was committed.
At trial, the couple could offer evidence to show that they lacked the mens rea to commit the crime, and if anyone’s interested I could talk about the subjective and objective components they would need to prove to make that showing.
You’re in the courtroom, finding the couple “not guilty.” The discussion is focused on events back in time, back on the porch, asking if the officer had probable cause to enter the home and make the arrest.
This is a case where there may have been no intent to commit the act at all. It’s obviously not illegal to close one’s door. The question is whether they intended to commit the act of resisting arrest. I don’t think its possible to resist arrest unless you know you are under arrest.
Well, all you have to do is look up the statute and see whether it has a phrase like “knowingly…” in it. Some are written so that you must know what you’re doing is crime, but others are not. I don’t think any lawyer is going to be able to tell you what the case is without seeing the statute. You’re the one claiming it isn’t a crime if they don’t know it’s a crime, so let’s see your cite for that.
If you’ll read my posts again, you’ll see that I was asking if mens rea was relevant in this case, not asserting it.
Found the statute.
So it has to be “willful.” Not guilty.
Yes, the deputy will still be able to slide by with the pretext that he broke into the house because they were (in his mind) “resisting arrest,” but I suspect the charges will be dropped. The deputy isn’t going to want to have to explain his lying about the door under oath.
Um, did you read the same thing I read? They willfully closed the door on the officer who was attempting to discharge a duty of his office. I would read that as guilty.
Convenient that you left out the word “cuts” at the end of that sentence. Perhaps you left that out because getting your arm slammed in a door would cause a bruise, not a cut, and you already knew that? There was no mention of bruises. Sorry, I call bullshit.
Bullshit. You assumed assault and then leapt to rape when the facts available thus far prevent us from knowing that there was anything more than an arrest. Don’t pretend that you connected the dots logically when you bounded from unsupported conclusion to extreme hyperbole like a mountain goat on crack.
Sorry, what’s this about a seatbelt? I didn’t see anything about that in yojimbo’s link.
Anyway, what I did see in that link, isn’t nearly as damning as you make out. I don’t put much store by eyewitness accounts on general principle, and it doesn’t sound to me like this guy had the best view of what was happening. It seems to me that, at best, he would have seen the cop’s back. Enough to tell that he was trying to force the door, but I’m skeptical about any specific details he claims about what the cop did, and when. He could be absolutly correct, of course: I’m not ruling out that either side did something stupid or criminal here. But one eyewitness isn’t enough to sway me one way or the other. Eyewitness testimony is just way too unreliable, especially in tense and unexpected situations, like this one.
I’m not sure why your so hung up about how difficult it would be to break the window. For the record: not very difficult at all. It may have escaped your attention, but glass has a reputation for being pretty fragile. Unless the Kuhns had safety glass mounted in their door, which is unlikely. It doesn’t have to be “super-fragile,” and the cop doesn’t have to have trained in a Shaolin monastery next to Kwai Chang Caine for it to have happened the way I suggested. The only thing remotely “unlikely” about it would be the cop having his hand in just the right place to hit the window, and not the door itself, and that’s not all that unlikely. It’s certainly more likely than the idea that the cop would break a window with his bare hand, and not his nightstick or gun. If he’d been that angry and out of control, once he got his hands on the people inside, I think we’d be discussing a scenario a lot closer to some of Dio’s wilder hypotheticals.
They would have to know that closing the door was preventing him from discharging a duty. They did not necessarily know that closing the door was preventing him from writing the ticket.
I think it’s also pretty hard to say they knew they were technically under arrest.
I take offense to this. Please don’t compare gonzomax to any of my kind.
carry on.
And as an addendum, Diogenes, I’m taking you less and less seriously as the minutes roll by. Your mind has been made up and you don’t listen. Not a way to fight your own ignorance.
This is different than what I concluded after reading your earlier post. You had said that cases “virtually every trial” involved trying to show “that a police offer is lying.” When in fact you had developed a sense and your experience showed that most of them were truthful.
Now you are stating that a vigorous cross examination is preferable to going off of opinion, which I can agree with. You do see the difference between nailing down the truth through intense questioning and portraying someone as a liar, don’t you?
I didn’t “assume” assault, I read it in the article. The deputy broke into their house and chased them, pulled out his billy club and “scuffled” with the husband. From their perspective (and from mine) that is assault and battery. It has been argued that the victims had no right no defend themselves against this “arrest.” I wanted to know at what point a citizen is allowed to defend himself against an “arrest.” It seems to me calling it an “arrest” is just a semantic ploy.
You’re the one who kepps making up facts to suit your specious arguments.
Oh, and you were wrong about the deputy being the only one who was injured. A rerading of Yojimbo’s link says that the husband suffered multiple cuts to his face.
ETA. I think I’m confusing your posts with buttonjockey’s. I was thinking of his contention that the injuries to the cop could have only come from having the door slammed on him, and I think he might also have been the one who said that only the cop was injured.
Mea culpa if I’m talking to the wrong dude.
I infer from the article it wasn’t a billy club, but rather a turbo powered chainsaw studded with iron dildos.
Oh christ, I was about to let this aspect of the thread go, but…
Have you ever had your arm trapped between two pieces of wood? Ever scraped and cut your arm against wood? The hypothesis is that Mr. Kuhn caught the deputy’s arm between the door and the jamb and the deputy pulled his arm out of the wooden vice created by Mr. Kuhn. That IS going to cause scrapes and cuts and if you had ever worked with wood or had any knowledge of mechanics or simple physics you would know that. Scraping skin against the edge of a door COULD cut you. Jeebus, too many people in this thread are willfully stupid.
A sad little monkey who has seen this many times.
We already know that this wasn’t the case. A disinterested witness SAW him break the glass himself. The deputy is flat busted on this.
Plus, it’s ludicrous to say that he could have ONLY gotten the injuries from having the door slammed on him. The more LIKELY explanation for his cuts is that he got them when he deciuded to willfully put his own arm through the glass.