

74 year old woman arrested for resisting arrest.. for that arrest - grecy
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130702/13385923696/texas-trooper-shoves-74-year-old-then-arrests-her-felony-assault-when-she-hits-him-with-her-purse.shtml

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DanBC
This shows the importance of remaining calm as possible when dealing with the
police. Especially if they're being arseholes. You sort it out later with
complaints and civil litigation.

Also this reminds me of the guy who had committed 2 crimes, was wrongfully
convicted of committing a third and sent to prison. This was a long sentence
because of 3 strikes laws. All the appeals ran their course. He escaped from
prison, gathered evidence, and had his wrongful conviction quashed. He was the
re-arrested for escaping from prison and convicted and again, because of 3
strikes laws, sent away for a long time.

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anigbrowl
A better Techdirt article than usual, but it says _right in the headline_ that
she was arrested for felony assault. Rewriting the headline to be factually
incorrect misrepresents both the situation and the article. Why would you do
that? Flagged.

~~~
grecy
I found this part of the article particularly interesting, because I've seen
more than a few comment threads on HN lately where people say you can't be
arrested for resisting arrest alone (as it makes no logical sense)

 _Because Contempt of Cop has yet to be codified into our criminal statutes,
the trooper allegedly drew a blank at first when filling out his report. But
even the final reduced charges are ridiculous, especially the resisting arrest
charge. If you 're going to charge someone with resisting arrest, it should
logically follow that an arrest was already in progress. _

~~~
tptacek
Can you point us to a thread where someone actually said you can't get
arrested for resisting arrest? That's a nonsensical belief. You do not have a
right to resist arrest.

~~~
grecy
They said you can't be arrested for resisting arrest alone, of which there
have been many recent cases.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If you're arrested "for
resisting arrest", there must have been some arrest in progress. I assume the
claim is instead that the arrest was somehow invalid. Some states have an
affirmative defense to "resisting" charges when excessive force is used, but
otherwise: resisting arrest is itself a crime.

If the police try to arrest you, don't fight back.

~~~
grecy
> _If you 're arrested "for resisting arrest", there must have been some
> arrest in progress._

That's exactly how a sane person would expect it to work, but it's not the
case lately in America. There have been many recent examples of people being
arrested and the only charge is "resisting arrest". Of course they get let out
of jail 12-24 hours later, but at that point the police have removed you from
what you were doing (protesting, for e.g.) and they now have your
fingerprints, photo and you have a history of arrest.

A quick Google gave me:

[http://www.naturalnews.com/040399_adam_kokesh_resisting_arre...](http://www.naturalnews.com/040399_adam_kokesh_resisting_arrest_philadelphia_protest.html)

There are many more examples.

~~~
tptacek
Hopefully nobody is disputing that the police sometimes arrest people for
bogus reasons.

