...Angelo Guisado is a Civil Rights attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. In a message to Law&Crime, he offered a prismatic view of the law enforcement official’s comments.

“Sheriff Dar Leaf’s supposition that the act was not a kidnapping of Governor Whitmer but a citizen’s arrest has to be understood in the historical context of citizen’s arrests,” he explained. “Originating from 13th century England, the precept followed to the colonies, including America, which many states used to justify slave patrols, wherein private citizens or, as here, militias, were empowered by the state to arrest and forcibly seize slaves to return them to their owners.” ...

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