At Common law, the Fleeing Felon Rule permits the use of force, including deadly force, against an individual who is suspected of a felony and is in clear flight. Force may be used by the victim, bystanders, or police officers. In some jurisprudence failure to use such force was a misdemeanor which could result in a fine or imprisonment. According to David Caplan "Immediate stopping of the fleeing felon, whether actually or presumably dangerous, was deemed absolutely necessary for the security of the people in a free state, and for maintaining the "public security." ... " Indeed, it has been said that the social policy of the common law in this matter was not only to threaten dangerous felons and hence deter them, but was also to induce them to "surrender peaceably" if they dared commit inherently dangerous felonies, rather than allow them to "escape trial for their crimes."
Famous quotes containing the words fleeing and/or rule:
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.”
—Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960)