page_title: Bad Elk v. United States
section_title: Death of John Kills Back
hierarchical_section_title: Bad Elk v. United States / Background / Death of John Kills Back
caption_attribution_description: Map of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
context_page_description: Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that an individual had the right to use force to resist an unlawful arrest and was entitled to a jury instruction to that effect.
  In 1899, a tribal police officer, John Bad Elk, shot and killed another tribal police officer who was attempting to arrest Bad Elk without a warrant, on a misdemeanor charge, for a crime allegedly committed outside of the presence of the arresting officer. The Supreme Court reversed his conviction, noting that a person had the right to resist an unlawful arrest, and in the case of a death, murder may be reduced to manslaughter. The Supreme Court held the arrest to be unlawful due, in part, to the lack of a valid warrant.
context_section_description: On March 8, 1899, John Bad Elk fired several shots from his pistol from or near his home on the Pine Ridge Reservation. At the time Bad Elk was employed as a tribal police officer for the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe. Captain Gleason, who was in charge of that part of the reservation, heard the shots and asked Bad Elk to stop by his office to discuss the matter, but Bad Elk did not show up. Gleason then ordered several other tribal police officers to arrest Bad Elk and to take him to the Pine Ridge Agency, about 25 miles away. Three officers contacted Bad Elk, who refused to go with them, telling them that he would go in the morning. The officers then tried to arrest Bad Elk, who shot and killed John Kills Back. Bad Elk claimed that Kills Back had reached for his pistol and that Bad Elk fired in self-defense. Kills Back and the other officers did not have an arrest warrant, nor was the offense one that they could arrest for without a warrant.
caption: Map of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
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