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Posted on September 16, 2025 in assault & violent crimes
Under Arizona Revised Statute 13-2508, resisting arrest occurs if you knowingly prevent or try to prevent a police officer from lawfully arresting you. You can be charged with resisting arrest even if the arrest attempt is legally invalid.
Ordinarily resisting arrest is a Class 6 felony in Arizona. This may be reduced to a Class 1 misdemeanor in some cases.
If you have been charged with resisting arrest under ARS 13-2508, the Rosenstein Law Group can protect your legal rights and represent you in plea negotiations as well as at trial. Call us at (480) 248-7666 for a free case evaluation.
Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) Section 13-2508 is the state’s resisting arrest law. The statute is not lengthy. It defines resisting arrest as:
Intentionally preventing, or attempting to prevent, a person you reasonably know to be a peace officer from making an arrest while acting under color of such person’s official authority.
Resisting arrest takes the form of:
As long as you should reasonably know that the person arresting you is a peace officer acting in that person’s legal capacity as a peace officer, then, for safety reasons, resisting arrest is prohibited under Arizona law in all circumstances.
This is so even when you believe that the arresting officer has no lawful reason to arrest you.
There are many ways you can meet the statutory definition of resisting arrest. Some common examples include:
If you resist arrest with physical violence or by threatening physical force, then there is a good chance that in addition to being charged with resisting arrest you will also face a charge of aggravated assault against the law enforcement officer.
This is a Class 5 or a Class 4 felony charge for aggravated assault, depending on whether injury occurs to the officer.
A substantial risk of causing physical injury is behavior that could lead to foreseeable harm to the arresting officer or another person.
Examples of creating a substantial risk of physical injury can be struggling with the arresting officer during a traffic stop that creates a risk of being struck by a passing vehicle, or calling out to bystanders to intervene in the arrest and someone attempts to do so by throwing rocks at the arresting officer.
Under ARS 13-2508(C), to passively resist an arresting officer is to engage in a nonviolent physical act, or any other act that you mean to impede, hinder, or delay the making of the arrest.
Examples of passive resistance behaviors are:
If you are convicted of resisting arrest by physical force or creating a substantial risk of physical injury, this is a Class 6 felony offense.
If you resist arrest by passive resistance, then this is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
If you are convicted of a Class 6 felony for the first time, then the possible penalties include:
If you have a prior felony conviction, then the prison sentence increases to between .75 and 2.75 years with no eligibility for probation.
A felony conviction also carries collateral consequences that may impact employment, finances, rights and housing.
A Class 1 misdemeanor conviction can carry the following punishments:
A first-time non-dangerous Class 6 “Undesignated” or “Open” felony conviction is sometimes referred to as a “wobbler.”
This is because under ARS 13-604, depending on factors like the nature and circumstances of the crime, your history and character, and whether it’s unduly harsh to sentence you to a felony, the prosecutor and/or the trial court judge has the discretion to reduce it to a Class 1 misdemeanor.
This is a possible outcome as a result of pre-trial plea negotiation or even post-conviction at sentencing.
Depending on the circumstances of the arrest, multiple possible defenses may be available to you for a resisting arrest charge. What follows are some of the most common kinds of defenses you may have.
Just because someone is trying to arrest you does not automatically mean that you cannot resist. If you reasonably believe that such a person is not a peace officer acting in an official capacity, like an impersonator, then your resistance to that person may be defensible. This defense is also possible if a police officer is not in uniform or fails to identify themselves as a police officer when trying to make the arrest.
Police officers must make it clear to you that they are placing you under detention or arrest. If, for example, the officer attempts to put you into handcuffs with no explanation, and you attempt to pull away when this happens, you may have a defense that you were not resisting arrest but rather an unlawful apprehension.
Similarly, you cannot resist arrest unless the police officer is actually trying to arrest you. If you can show a lack of intent on the part of the police officer to make an arrest, or that you reasonably were unaware that you were being placed under arrest, then you cannot intentionally be resisting arrest.
The flip side of the coin when it comes to resisting arrest is that police officers cannot use unreasonable or unnecessary force when making an arrest. If this occurs then it is a valid defense even when the arrest is valid.
Words alone that criticize or challenge the officer’s actions during the arrest, and which do not rise to the level of threatening violence, are not sufficient grounds for a charge of resisting arrest. This defense happens often in misdemeanor resisting arrest cases when the officer accuses you of engaging in passive resistance.
Mere argument or criticism of a peace officer by itself is not enough to convict someone of resisting arrest.
Attempting to run away or drive away from an officer who is trying to arrest you is different from attempting to flee from a police officer who is trying to make a traffic stop or is otherwise trying to stop you.
In this situation, you may still be subject to a charge of failing to comply with a police officer under ARS 28-622 or unlawful flight from a pursuing law enforcement vehicle under ARS 28-622.01.
Police officer testimony alone may not be enough to convince a jury that you were resisting arrest. If the police do not have sufficient physical evidence or video evidence from body cameras to support the charge, this could lead to reasonable doubt that you were resisting arrest.
When making an arrest, police officers must follow specific procedures to observe your legal rights under the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions. This includes informing you of your Miranda rights prior to being subjected to questioning while in police custody and/or violating those rights after placing you under arrest.
Although this is not a direct defense against resisting arrest charges, if you can show that your constitutional rights were violated during the arrest, you can still attack the validity of the arrest even if you are accused of resisting arrest.
The prosecution must prove every element of a resisting arrest charge against you beyond a reasonable doubt to obtain a conviction for resisting arrest. As we have shown above, you may have one or more valid legal defenses that can cast reasonable doubt on one or more of the statutory elements.
Several of the defenses to a resisting arrest charge depend on understanding applicable Arizona court decisions and how they affect the interpretation of ARS 13-2508. This is one reason why it is important to have an experienced Arizona criminal defense attorney to represent you.
A criminal defense lawyer from Rosenstein Law Group will know how to analyze the facts of your arrest in light of how police, prosecutors, and judges interpret resisting arrest charges. We will present the best possible negotiation strategy to have a resisting arrest case dropped if possible, or reduced to a lesser charge.
In some felony resisting arrest situations, we may be able to have a charge or conviction reduced to a misdemeanor.
Resisting arrest charges happen often in cases that also involve charges of driving under the influence, or DUI. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding your arrest, an experienced Rosenstein Law Group attorney can help obtain the best possible outcome for you.
Call our office at (480) 248-7666 at any time to schedule a free initial consultation to review your resisting arrest charge. You can also schedule a free consultation by using our online contact form.