A police officer may use force dangerous to human life to make a lawful arrest for committing or attempting to commit a felony, whenever he or she reasonably believes that force dangerous to human life is necessary to effect the arrest and that the person to be arrested is aware that a peace officer is attempting to arrest him or her.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-7-9
Conditions justifying force dangerous to life
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Tennessee v. Garner (1985)
Most recently applied in Tennessee v. Garner (March 1985)
G.L. 1938, ch. 625, § 68; P.L. 1941, ch. 982, § 1; G.L. 1956, § 12-7-9.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Rhode Island General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Rhode Island statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.