Posse comitatus

For other uses, see Posse comitatus (disambiguation).

An American posse in 1922, which captured the outlaws Manuel Martinez and Placidio Silvas, who are in the center of the back row. Martinez and Silvas were arrested for the Ruby Murders after the largest manhunt in the history of the Southwest.[1]

The posse comitatus (from the Latin for "power of the county"), frequently shortened to posse, is in common law a group of people mobilized to suppress lawlessness, defend the people, or otherwise protect the place, property, and public welfare. It may be called by the conservator of peace – typically a reeve, sheriff, chief, or another special/regional designee like an officer of the peace potentially accompanied by or with the direction of a justice or ajudged parajudicial process given the imminence of actual damage. The posse comitatus as an English jurisprudentially defined doctrine dates back to 9th-century England and the campaigns of Alfred the Great, and before in ancient custom and law of locally martialed forces, simultaneous thereafter with the officiation of sheriff nomination to keep the regnant peace (known as "the queen/king's peace").[2] There must be a lawful reason for a posse, which can never be used for lawlessness.

  1. ^ "Ruby, Arizona – A Ghost Town Filled With Mining and Murder". Legends of America. p. 3. Archived from the original on 2011-08-23. Retrieved 2011-08-02.
  2. ^ Kopel, David B. (Fall 2015). "The Posse Comitatus And the Office of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned to The Aid of Law Enforcement". Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 104 (4): 763–781. Retrieved 2022-10-21.