If you’ve ever wondered about your rights during an arrest, or what really constitutes “unlawful,” this episode delivers clear answers, practical advice, and a much-needed reality check.

Welcome back to another episode of Lawyer Talk! Today, Steve Palmer and Troy Henricksen talk about a hot-button topic that’s sparked tons of debate and plenty of strong opinions: Can you legally resist an unlawful arrest?

Building off recent listener questions and comments, the conversation unpacks what the law actually says, where confusion often arises, and—most importantly—why the courtroom is the right place to argue an unlawful arrest, not the streets.

Together, Steve Palmer and Troy Henricksen break down misconceptions about probable cause, discuss real-world scenarios, and clarify the difference between legal defenses after the fact and dangerous choices in the moment.

Moments

03:55 "Charges, Police, and Legal Defense"

07:49 "Resisting Arrest and Court Rights"

Here are 3 key takeaways:

1. Legal Rights vs. Practical Realities: While Ohio law recognizes resisting an unlawful arrest as a legal defense, trying to do so on the street can have dangerous—and even fatal—consequences. The courtroom is the right place to fight back, not during the incident itself.
2. Probable Cause Standard Is Low: Many people misunderstand what constitutes “probable cause.” As Troy Henricksen points out, it doesn’t take much for an officer to make a legal arrest—matching a vague description might be enough.
3. Courtroom Is the Battleground: Steve Palmer emphasizes that even if an arrest is later found to be unlawful, resistance during the arrest can lead to additional charges. The best course of action is to comply in the moment and let your attorney fight for you in court.

Got a question you want answered on the podcast? Call 614-859-2119 and leave us a voicemail. Steve will answer your question on the next podcast!

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high-publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2026 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

Mentioned in this episode:

Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants

Circle 270 Media® is a podcast consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in helping businesses develop, launch, and optimize podcasts as part of their marketing strategy. The firm emphasizes the importance of storytelling through podcasting to differentiate businesses and engage with their audiences effectively. www.circle270media.com

All right, Lawyer talk off the record, on the air. We are back following up on a discussion we had a few weeks ago or whenever that was. And it was about whether you can. Whether you, being U.S. citizens, United States, Americans, can resist an unlawful arrest. And this has blown up a little bit. I mean, people have a lot of opinions about whether we, the people should be able to resist an unlawful arrest. And I've read lots of comments on this to our discussion, and I wanted to follow up a little bit on what we were getting at.

So, I mean, first of all, can you resist an unlawful arrest? You can in Ohio. We're talking about Ohio law now. Other states may be different, so if you've got a case going on, talk to your lawyer. But in Ohio, the law would say you can resist unlawful arrest.

But what is that?

I don't. I want to take it a step further and say, what does it. What does that really mean in the context of life?

Because I feel like when people hear that off the bat, they think, anytime I'm getting arrested now, now I can.

Right. Fight back, like, because I think it's unlawful.

Yes.

So here's. Here's some of the confusion. So let's. Let's look at it this way. The cops. Troy, you're a police officer, and, you know, you pull me over and you say, get out of the car. You're under arrest.

You slept.

Son of a. You know, whatever. Up against the wall, mofo. You're under arrest. And I say, I didn't do anything wrong. This is an unlawful arrest. So I'm going to fight you. What do you think's going to happen?

Well, me being the cop, I'm a little eager. Probably going to pull out my taser. I'm going to go to town on you. Really?

Yeah. Like, the best case scenario. Look, the best case scenario is I get my backside, I get my fanny whipped.

Yeah.

And I end up in cuffs because I'm not going to beat up a cop. And if I can, they're going to bring in another one. And if I take on that one, they're going to bring more. And if I run away, they're going to find. I mean, there is no good end to that.

Yeah.

So I'm going to lose that battle. The worst case scenario is you get shot. Yeah. Right. So this is not. Can you resist. This is not a question that implies to anybody that you should resist an arrest that you think is unlawful. I think what we were trying to say is quite the opposite.

So, look, I. Back to our Scenario I. You're arresting me, and I say, you got the wrong man. What should I do?

Unfortunately, what you should do is you should just let me handcuff you, take me with you, and then we can figure it out and realize, okay, we got the wrong guy. That's what should happen.

So whether the arrest is lawful is not my decision in the moment. And if it is my decision in the moment, it's not on me constitutionally to act on that and resist it. So what we're talking about is a scenario where we've had a couple of these after the fact, somebody is charged with a crime. And let me come up with a scenario here. You arrest me, you got the wrong guy, and then I fight it. You got the wrong guy, you jackbooted thug cop. You're corrupt. You're all corrupt.

You're greedy pot lickers. Whatever you're going to call a cop, I'm sure you can come up with a lot. I could show you some DUI videos where there's. There's some. How you can use the word pig and the F word together in, like, multiple different ways. This guy was a master at it.

But anyway, we'll get a montage together. We should get a montage.

So all those things happen, and I've now been arrested for the crime of murder. And then we get. We get to the police station, and the police say, oh, you know what? You do look a lot like the guy. But we got it wrong.

In my head. We let him go right there.

Yeah, except. Except I beat up the cops.

Oh, yeah, That's a tricky arrest.

Here's what you're going to see. I'm going to see this litany of tickets for complaints. Resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, obstruction of official business, assault on a peace officer. And I'm not saying any of these are valid, but that's what we see. And usually what I see is the further the police go in the process of kicking my backside, the more charges I get. And then somebody comes to me, and a guy like me goes to Troy and says, ring a ling a ling. I want a lawyer. And what do I do? And you say, well, did you get charged with murder? No, that was dismissed.

I didn't get you. So what are you dealing? Well, I fought the cops. All right, let's say the arrest was. The police arrested me without probable cause. So it was. This is a legal conclusion. They didn't have probable cause to arrest me. They made a mistake or they were wrong or whatever.

Maybe it was intentionally. Whatever it is they didn't have a right to arrest me. Now I. But I resisted that arrest. Now we're getting somewhere.

Yeah.

Because this is the legal argument that we take into a courtroom to defend the person who resisted the unlawful arrest. It is not that on the side of the street, you should fight back and resist the arrest. But if somebody does and then they call us, we go into courtroom in an Ohio, that's a defense to the charge of resisting arrest.

I think the problem is people are going to be like, well, they didn't have probable cause. And I don't think people understand how low that burden of them is to have the probable cause to at least arrest you.

Yeah. So you're to, You're. You're cutting to the heart of the question. Like, is it. What makes it an unlawful arrest? All right, so an arrest without probable cause is an unlawful arrest. Yeah. What's probable cause? Well, you tell me if you know. But the standard is basically what a reasonable.

Would a reasonable person think something is true.

Yeah. You match the description of the guy we were looking for. Boom, there we go. That's at least enough right there.

It could be probable cause, right? It could be. It doesn't have to be, but it could be. So probable cause. It's like one of these things that it's got a definition, but it's got lots of interpretation. It's got the capacity for lots of interpretation behind it. And then case law sort of chips away at it and you try to find a scenario that's close to yours. And a court said this about that. That's common law.

Yeah. So our back to our hero, me in this case, I get arrested. I fought back. I'm charged with resisting arrest. They realize they had the wrong guy. And I'm arguing the police didn't have authority to arrest me in the first place. It was unlawful. And you're going to defend me in a courtroom by presenting evidence that, look, this guy resisted, but it was an unlawful arrest.

He had a right to do that. It's a defense in court.

Yeah.

It's not a defense on the streets. And this is the distinction that I think is critical for everybody that was. That's into this stuff. Like, we are.

Yeah. And I saw a bunch of the comments on there. Like, these people were taking it very far. They were like, it gets to the point where you can, like, lawfully, like. I think a bunch of them kept saying, like, you could lawfully, like, take an officer's life. If they're, like, wrongfully, like, arresting you. And it was like, I don't, I don't know about all that. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Yeah. Bad advice. Bad advice. One, because nobody wants to kill anybody else.

No.

Or at least you shouldn't want to kill anybody else. You know, that's sort of one of the things that as a citizen we, you know, going out there thinking I'm going to shoot a cop is bad.

Yeah.

And even if you, let's say there's a scenario you can invent in your head that you did shoot a cop and it was you got a, you got away or you were able to justify it in some sort of self defense argument, I would still not rather have a dead police officer.

No. It was a very alarming amount of comments though on the, I think it was like 25 at least that were like saying that and I was like, wow, you guys are getting, I don't know where you're getting your information from, but so let's be clear.

Nothing, nothing about our right to go into a courtroom and present evidence to defend resisting arrest or some other crime should or did or is intended to suggest that people on the street have a right to go fight police officers and should fight police officers and fight back. It's almost always better if the arrest is not almost. It's always better if the arrest is unlawful. They're going to win. The point of what we're saying is the police are going to win that battle. They're going to win that battle now. They're going to get back to us when we get it. When I get to take it into a courtroom, whether you're public, whether you can afford a lawyer, get a public defender, whatever it is.

When your attorney gets into a courtroom, we can fight back there legally within the bounds of the system. And the streets aren't the place for that.

No.

That's the point. So look, I, I love the comments and I love where people are going with this and maybe you probably have some direct insight because it sort of, it sort of felt like law school for a little bit.

Yeah.

You know that, that's the law school process.

Yeah.

This Socratic idea, the Socratic being like Socrates question, like Socrates learned by questioning and answering through dialogue. And this is the kind of dialogue that I think is very helpful for people to understand how things work and evolve and make change. But fighting it out on the side of the streets, ultimately I'm here to tell you I can skip all the dialogue. It's not a good thing.

It never is, really.

It never is either. You're going to get hurt. A police officer is going to get hurt. And you can argue whether you think all cops are bad or whatever. Disagree. And killing anybody is bad.

Absolutely.

So, look, can you resist? Even if you can resist on law for it doesn't mean you should. And if you do and you get charged with crimes, then we get to use that as a defense in court. That's what that's about. All right. So love the comments, guys. Keep them coming. You got a question? Go to lawyerertalkpodcast.com submit it. I know some of you have suggested some topics that you want us to cover.

I had a couple of great questions. We're working to get to them. I promise that we will keep them coming.