I found the following case brief at Study Buddy. There are several issues involved in this incident in 1980 when members of the Coast Guard boarded a boat. This 1982 case was on appeal in the 11th circuit court.
United States v. Danehy
Citation: 680 F.2d 1311 (11th Cir. 1982)
Facts
The defendant was accused of trying to ram a Coast Guard boat with his fishing boat and then resisting Coast Guard officers who boarded his boat and arrested him. The defendant testified at trial and denied these allegations. The defendant attempted to introduce evidence of his reputation for truthfulness. The district court excluded this evidence. The defendant claimed that this was an abuse of discretion.
Thomas Danehy and people aboard his 28 foot boat had different accounts of what happened than what those on the Coast Guard boat did. I posted about this case earlier today on Facebook; and here's the link to the whole case, at Justia. And below are some of the highlights from the case:
The appellant claims the trial court made three reversible errors. We turn to the first of these, the contention that the district court should have allowed Danehy to call three witnesses to testify to his reputation of truthfulness.
Daney did not win on this issue. The court said that was "plain error," not abuse of discretion and I guess didn't carry enough weight to get the conviction thrown out.
In Wiscasset District Court this spring, the judge did the same thing to me, wouldn't let my one character witnesses speak, or let me enter the letters of reference I had from two other individuals. I disagree with Judge John Martin, but my opinion or yours doesn't matter. A judge can always justify his decision; and if he can't, you or anyone else will be hard-pressed to hold him accountable for violating your rights.
Danehy's second contention is that the trial court gave an improper jury instruction on whether it was necessary that Danehy know it was federal officers he was resisting. Tied in with this is Danehy's claim that he was improperly denied an instruction to the jury on the subject of resisting an unlawful arrest.
We hold that the trial judge was in error when he gave this instruction. This instruction is contrary to United States v. Feola, 420 U.S. 671, 679, 95 S. Ct. 1255, 1261, 43 L. Ed. 2d 541 (1975); United States v. Ochoa, 526 F.2d 1278, 1281 (5th Cir. 1976); and United States v. Young, 464 F.2d 160, 163 (5th Cir. 1972). Young states that a defendant may not be held absolutely liable for assaulting a government officer when the defendant acts from a mistaken belief that he himself is threatened with an intentional tort by a private citizen. Ochoa goes further and states that even deadly force, in the proper circumstances, could be employed by the defendant if he could reasonably believe that the intruders were a threat to his person. The Supreme Court in Feola stated that "the situation is not one where legitimate conduct becomes unlawful solely because of the identity of the individual or agency affected." 420 U.S. at 685, 95 S. Ct. at 1264.
Sounding good so far. I didn't see anything mentioned by the judge though regarding that an officer acts under color of law if he is without proper authority, and can be sued under 42 U.S. Code § 1983 - Civil action for deprivation of rights.
Danehy's conviction was reversed; but not because of any admission of wrongful arrest. It was because of the failure of the judge to tell the jury about the 4th element to prove someone is resisting arrest, which is doing it knowingly.
We conclude that under the circumstances of this case, Danehy had no right to forcibly resist the Coast Guard arrest, even on the unlikely supposition that the arrest was unlawful.
What? What was the majority’s reasoning? I'm not sure the final outcome for Thomas Danehy. I'm still reading the case and writing about it. So even when the warrant is based on bad information, you could be charged and convicted if you resist. I wouldn't do it anyway - except in certain situations such as I did find myself in on March 30 and October 8 of 2025. Yes, I resisted, but did it from behind a locked door, which they then breeched; and I'm trying to get the help of a civil rights attorney for the violations of my 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th amendments.
It's usually not smart to forcibly resist...they will always outpower you. When they make a decision to arrest you, whether or not they have probable cause, I believe law enforcement rarely change their mind; they rarely question a judge's warrant. I see the majority in the case based their decision on old case law, saying it was no longer relevant.
Speaking for the court in United States v. Johnson, 542 F.2d 230, 233 (5th Cir. 1976), Judge Morgan evaluated the current vitality of the common law right to forcibly resist unlawful arrest. He concluded that old Fifth Circuit case law on the subject had been "sapped of its precedential value" by the persuasive authority of decisions from the other courts of appeals. Those decisions recognize that the common law right to resist an arrest that is not based upon probable cause, suited though it may have been to a past era, has no significant role to play in our own society where ready access to the courts is available to redress such police misconduct.
Huh? IT IS NOT! It's so difficult to get those who work in the justice system, which includes law enforcement, held accountable for misconduct, and more! There's much video footage on the television news and on the Internet of police arresting people without good reason. Some of the victims are the deaf, the blind, the disabled, the homeless, immigrants, the poor, victims of domestic violence, and people with mental health issues...isn't that just about everyone! One state, Alabama, passed a law, Cade Noah Act (2024) mandating training to deal with such vulnerable populations.
Okay, one judge, Clark, dissenting, said:
The majority reasoning is that a citizen, if unlawfully arrested, should go along to the police station, make bond (the majority assume he can) and later sue the policeman for the tort of unlawful arrest. The citizen is not justified in using even passive force to resist.
