Throughout the recent flurry of news reports and responding readers' letters on the gun-control issue and the Branch Davidian trials, your editorials have pretty much reflected the major U.S. media view. This has been distressing for a long time, but your editorial on the verdict in the Davidian trial cries out for some intelligent response.
You state, "One troublesome aspect of this case was the instruction from the judge that jurors consider self-defense as a crucial part of the case." Later you ask, "But from a legal standpoint, the question remains: When is it permissible to claim an argument of self-defense against bona fide police officers in the act of making an arrest? Regardless of the many mistakes made in this tragic case, there cannot be a precedent made for self-defense against officers of the law."The judge rightly instructed the jury and with ample precedent so this case could not qualify as precedent. I would like to list a few of the scores of precedents: "Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer's life if necessary." Plummer vs. State, 135 Ind. 308.
This fundamental premise was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in John Bad Elk vs. U.S., 177 U.S. 529 (1900) when the court stated, " . . . where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What might be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.
"An arrest made with a defective warrant; or one issued without affidavit; or one that fails to allege a crime is without jurisdiction, and one who is being arrested may resist arrest and break away. If the arresting officer is killed by one who is so resisting, the killing will be no more than an involuntary manslaughter." Housh vs. People, 7 5 111. 491; reaffirmed and quoted many other cases.
"When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel force by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self-defense, his assailant is killed, he is justifiable." Runyan vs. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller vs. State, 74 Ind. 1.
"These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence." Jones vs. State, 26 Texas App. 1; Beaverts vs. State, 4 Texas App. 175; Skidmore vs. State, 43 Texas 93.
If you have been reading the letters from your readers, you will have read many quotes from the Founding Fathers stating their understanding of the God-given, inalienable right of the citizens to bear arms. In their opinion, it was and remains not only a right but an obligation. Yet nowhere in their rhetoric do they mention sport shooting or hunting.
The purpose for the God-given right, and the reason that the majority of the 65 million gun owners in this country will not give them up, is to secure to each individual the final defense against ruthless government tyranny of the type we witnessed in Waco, Texas.
So rather than being a dangerous precedent, as you state, self-defense is the compelling reason for maintaining this right and ability at all costs. The only issue in the entire debate is whether the citizen, as a last resort, has a right to defend himself against illegal arrests, faulty warrants or terrorist attacks by the legal authorities.
This was the appropriate question in the trial and in many previous trials cited above. I believe the majority of sane, reasonable men and women in this country would agree as did the Founding Fathers in foreseeing our day.
Robert J. Smith
Taylorsville