In Brief
One act, chapter 2026-144, effective June 16, 2026, struck the word lawful from Florida’s resisting with violence statute, its battery on an officer statute, and its sentencing statute for the killing of an officer. It defined good faith to include an arrest later found unlawful, and it repealed the subsection that said an officer may not use force in an arrest the officer knows is unlawful. Resisting without violence was not touched and still requires a lawful duty. An arrest before June 16 is charged under the old words.
On This Page
On June 16, 2026 the Governor signed the Officer Jason Raynor Act, and it took effect the same day. Most of the coverage described it as a bill that raises the penalty for killing a police officer, which it does. What almost nobody reported is that the same act rewrote the two statutes I see most often after a roadside struggle, resisting an officer with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer, and took one word out of both of them.
The word is lawful. For as long as those statutes have existed, the State had to prove that the officer was engaged in the lawful execution of a legal duty. As of June 16, the felony statute says the officer must have been engaged in the performance of official duties. I read the enrolled act with its strike-throughs and underlines, and this post walks through what it changed, section by section, and what it left alone.
What the Act Changed, Section by Section
The act is chapter 2026-144, Laws of Florida, passed as Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 156. It has seven sections. One is the short title and one is the effective date, which is on becoming law. The other five amend existing statutes. The table shows each edit in the words the Legislature used, the struck language on the left and the new language on the right.
| Statute | Before June 16, 2026 | After |
|---|---|---|
| 776.051, use of force in resisting arrest | Not justified in using force to resist “an arrest by a law enforcement officer, or to resist a law enforcement officer who is engaged in the execution of a legal duty,” if the officer acted in good faith. A second subsection said an officer “is not justified in the use of force if the arrest or execution of a legal duty is unlawful and known by him or her to be unlawful.” | Not justified in using force to resist “any arrest or detention,” or an officer “engaged in the performance of his or her official duties as described in s. 943.10(1).” Good faith is defined. The second subsection is repealed. |
| 782.065, sentence for killing an officer | Mandatory life without release for murder, attempted murder, or attempted felony murder of an officer “engaged in the lawful performance of a legal duty.” | Manslaughter under 782.07(1) is added to the list. The victim clause now reads “engaged in the performance of his or her official duties as described in s. 943.10.” |
| 784.07(2), battery on an officer | Reclassified when the officer is “engaged in the lawful performance of his or her duties.” | Reclassified when the officer is “engaged in the performance of his or her official duties.” |
| 843.01(1), resisting with violence | An officer “in the execution of legal process or in the lawful execution of any legal duty.” | An officer “in the execution of legal process or engaged in the performance of his or her official duties as described in s. 943.10.” |
| 921.0022, the offense severity chart | Battery on a law enforcement officer ranked at Level 4. | Ranked at Level 5. |
The Word That Came Out
Three of those edits are the same edit. In the resisting with violence statute, the battery on an officer statute, and the sentencing statute for the killing of an officer, the phrase that tied the crime to a lawful duty was struck and replaced with the performance of official duties as described in section 943.10, which is the statute that defines who a law enforcement officer is and what the job consists of.
That matters because lawful was never decoration. To convict on resisting with violence, the State had to prove three things: that the person knowingly and willfully resisted, obstructed, or opposed an officer, that the officer was engaged in the lawful execution of a legal duty, and that the person knew the officer was an officer. Where a stop had no basis, or a detention ran past what the law allowed, the second element could fail, and it failed in the felony and the misdemeanor alike. My page on battery on an officer and resisting arrest has described that element as the center of the defense in these cases, and until June it was.
The new language asks a different question. An officer performing official duties is an officer doing the job. Whether the job was being done lawfully at that moment is what the old word required and the new one does not. How Florida courts will read the new phrase is still ahead of us. The act is a few months old and no appellate court has construed it. What I can say today is that the argument that a bad stop defeats a resisting with violence charge on the elements has to be made on different ground than it did in May.
The Sentence That Was Repealed
Section 776.051 sits in the chapter on justifiable use of force, and until June it had two subsections. The first said a person is not justified in using force to resist an arrest by an officer acting in good faith who is known, or reasonably appears, to be an officer. That is the rule everybody knows. Florida abolished the common law right to resist an unlawful arrest with force decades ago, and the Florida Supreme Court has said so in as many words.
The second subsection was the one almost nobody quoted. It said that a law enforcement officer, or anyone the officer directed to assist, is not justified in the use of force if the arrest or execution of a legal duty is unlawful and known by him or her to be unlawful. That was the officer’s side of the bargain. A citizen could not fight an arrest that turned out to be wrong, and an officer could not claim justification for force used in an arrest the officer knew was wrong.
The act struck that subsection in its entirety. Nothing replaced it. The section now consists of a single paragraph. Every word of it is addressed to the person being arrested.
Good Faith Now Has a Definition
The paragraph that remains was rewritten as well. It now covers any arrest or detention. The version on the books in 2002 reached only an actual arrest, which is how the Florida Supreme Court read it in 2007, and a 2008 amendment extended it to an officer engaged in the execution of a legal duty. The 2026 act names detention expressly and swaps legal duty for official duties. And for the first time the statute says what acting in good faith means: to make sincere and reasonable efforts to comply with legal requirements, even if the arrest, detention, or other act is later found to have been unlawful.
Before June, good faith was an undefined condition on the officer’s conduct, and a defense lawyer could argue about what it required. The statute now says an arrest later held unlawful can still have been made in good faith, so long as the officer was making sincere and reasonable efforts to follow the law. A suppression ruling that the stop was bad no longer answers the good faith question on its own.
What the Act Left Alone
Two things survived, and both still decide cases.
Resisting without violence, section 843.02, was not amended. It still reads in the lawful execution of any legal duty. So the misdemeanor keeps the element the felony lost. If a stop was unlawful, a resisting without violence charge that came out of it has the same hole in it that it had before. The act produced an odd result, a more serious charge that no longer requires a lawful duty sitting beside a less serious one that does, and I expect that mismatch to be argued. The Florida Supreme Court has been unwilling before to read the two resisting statutes in a way that demands more of the State for the misdemeanor than for the felony.
The knowledge element also survived. In 2007 the Florida Supreme Court held in Polite v. State, 973 So. 2d 1107, that knowledge of the officer’s status is an essential element of resisting with violence, and it read the same requirement into the misdemeanor. The act did not touch the words knowingly and willfully, and the justification statute still requires that the officer be known, or reasonably appear, to be a law enforcement officer. A plainclothes encounter is defended on the same facts it always was.
Which Law Applies to Your Arrest
The act took effect when it became law, which was June 16, 2026. It carries no language making it retroactive, and Florida does not apply a criminal statute to conduct that came before it. The offense is prosecuted under the law in force on the date it was committed. A person arrested in May and set for trial this fall is charged under the old words, with lawful execution of a legal duty as an element. A person arrested in July is charged under the new ones.
That line is easy to check against the paperwork. The arrest date is on the probable cause affidavit, and the information will cite the statute. If the arrest predates June 16, the old element is still the State’s to prove.
The Rest of the Act
The remaining sections are about sentencing. Section 782.065 already required a sentence of life without release when the victim of a murder, attempted murder, or attempted felony murder was an officer on duty. The act adds manslaughter under section 782.07(1) to that list. Manslaughter is a second degree felony in every other setting, and it is the charge that fits a killing by culpable negligence rather than intent. Where the person killed was an officer on duty, it now carries the same mandatory sentence as murder.
Battery on a law enforcement officer also moved on the Criminal Punishment Code scoresheet, from Level 4 to Level 5, which raises the points it scores and, with them, the sentencing range. The reclassification itself did not change. A simple battery on an officer is still a third degree felony, an aggravated assault still carries its three-year minimum, and an aggravated battery still carries five.
What This Means If You Are Charged
Three things matter early. The date of the arrest decides which version of the statute the State is prosecuting under, and the two versions have different elements. A resisting without violence count still requires a lawful duty, so the legality of the stop remains a full defense to it even where it sits next to a felony count that no longer has that element. And the questions these cases have always turned on, whether there was violence at all, whether a pulled arm was a reflex, and whether the person knew they were dealing with an officer, are exactly where they were, on the video.
The elements, the reclassification, and the mandatory minimums are set out on the firm’s battery on an officer and resisting arrest page, which now carries a note on the act. Challenging the stop itself is covered in the search and seizure section, and the wider picture of a criminal charge in Pinellas and Hillsborough is on the criminal defense page.
Common Questions
Did Florida make it legal for police to make an unlawful arrest?
No. An unlawful arrest is still unlawful, and evidence that follows from a bad stop can still be suppressed. What changed is narrower. The resisting with violence and battery on an officer statutes no longer list a lawful duty among their elements, and the justification statute now says an officer can act in good faith even where the arrest is later found unlawful.
Can I still argue the stop was illegal if I am charged with resisting?
Yes. For resisting without violence it is still an element the State must prove. For the felony, the legality of the stop remains relevant to suppression and to the facts, but for an arrest on or after June 16, 2026 it is no longer written into the statute as an element.
Does the new law apply to an arrest that happened before June 16, 2026?
No. The act took effect on that date and has no retroactive clause. An earlier arrest is charged under the earlier text, which includes the lawful execution of a legal duty.
Is battery on an officer punished more harshly now?
Its ranking on the sentencing scoresheet moved from Level 4 to Level 5, and the word lawful came out of the reclassification statute. The reclassification itself, from a first degree misdemeanor to a third degree felony, did not change, and neither did the mandatory minimums for aggravated assault and aggravated battery on an officer.
Further Reading
- Chapter 2026-144, Laws of Florida (CS/SB 156), the enrolled act with its strike-throughs and underlines, Florida Department of State
- Fla. Stat. 776.051 (2026), use or threatened use of force in resisting arrest or detention, Online Sunshine
- Fla. Stat. 843.01 (2026), resisting an officer with violence, Online Sunshine
- Fla. Stat. 843.02 (2026), resisting an officer without violence, unchanged by the act, Online Sunshine
WRITTEN AND REVIEWED BY
Rory Safir, ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist
He is the author of The Florida DUI Trial Manual, an NHTSA-qualified instructor in the standardized field sobriety exercises, faculty of the National College for DUI Defense, and a former Assistant Public Defender in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit.
This post is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The Officer Jason Raynor Act is chapter 2026-144, Laws of Florida, amending sections 776.051, 782.065, 784.07, 843.01, and 921.0022, Florida Statutes, effective June 16, 2026; section 843.02 was not amended. Polite v. State, 973 So. 2d 1107 (Fla. 2007), is the decision on the knowledge element. No appellate court has yet construed the amended language, so how it will be applied is not settled. Every case turns on its own facts, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
