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Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-7-108

Resistance to officer

Applied in 10 court decisions — leading case Tennessee v. Garner (1985)

Most recently applied in Reavis v. Frost (July 2020)

Code 1858, § 5040; Shan., § 7000; Code 1932, § 11539; T.C.A

How often courts cite this section

1985199020002010202020
citing decisions per year

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.

(1) A law enforcement officer, after giving notice of the officer's identity as an officer, may use or threaten to use force that is reasonably necessary to accomplish the arrest of an individual suspected of a criminal act who resists or flees from the arrest.

(2) Notwithstanding subsection (a), the officer may use deadly force to effect an arrest only if all other reasonable means of apprehension have been exhausted or are unavailable, and where feasible, the officer has given notice of the officer's identity as an officer and given a warning that deadly force may be used unless resistance or flight ceases, and: The officer has probable cause to believe the individual to be arrested has committed a felony involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious bodily injury; or

(3) The officer has probable cause to believe that the individual to be arrested poses a threat of serious bodily injury, either to the officer or to others unless immediately apprehended.

(4) All law enforcement officers, both state and local, shall be bound by this section and shall receive instruction regarding implementation of this section in law enforcement training programs.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.