Roberson v. State

Citations

• 43 Fla. 156

Syllabus

<p>Criminal Law — Arrest Without Warrant — Homicide of Officer Making Unlawful Arr.est.</p> <p>1. The carrying of arms in a quiet, peaceable, and ordinary manner, but concealed on or about the person, is not either a breach of the peace or malum in se. Neither does it, of itself, tend to a breach of the peace, but it becomes a misdemeanor only because it is prohibited by statute. Tlie statute does not declare it to be a breach of the peace, nor does the statute authorize an arrest without warrant for its infraction.</p> <p>2. An officer cannot, under the laws of Florida, lawfully arrest a person without a warrant for'the bare crime of carrying concealed weapons, whether he knows it of his own knowledge, or is informed of it by others, and whether it occurs in or out of his presence, unless it is done in such manner or under such circumstances as, in the presence of the officer, to create, threaten, or amount to a breach of the peace; and even in the latter case the arrest would be authorized, not from the Bare fact of carrying concealed weapons, but because of the threatened or actual breach of the peace accompanying it.</p> <p>3. An unlawful arrest, made without warrant, is a trespasss; and, like other trespasses, it may not, in the particular case, constitute an aggravated provocation. The fact that an officer or citizen attempting the arrest (and being slain in so doing) has exceeded his authority, does not reduce the killing to manslaughter, if the slayer had no valid reason to belive himself in immediate danger of death or great bodily harm, and the homicide was in fact perpetrated not in passion or sudden heat, upon the provocation of the arrest, but with cool, deliberate malice and premeditation. An attempt to arrest a person in violation of law may afford such provocation to the person arrested as to reduce the killing from murder to manslaughter. If the attempt to arrest be unlawful, the party sought to be arrested may use such reasonable force, proportione