Legal Definitions - rescous

Rescous

In legal terms, rescous refers to the unlawful act of taking away goods or persons that have been lawfully seized or arrested. It is essentially an interference with legal custody or possession, preventing the proper execution of a legal process.

Here are some examples to illustrate this concept:

• Imagine a situation where a landlord, due to a tenant's failure to pay rent, lawfully seizes certain items of the tenant's property (such as furniture) as a distress for rent. If the tenant, or another person acting on their behalf, forcibly removes these seized items from the landlord's possession before they can be legally sold or otherwise disposed of, this act would constitute rescous. The property was under lawful seizure, and its removal was unlawful.

• Consider a scenario where a sheriff's deputy has lawfully arrested a suspect for a crime and is in the process of transporting them to the police station. If a group of the suspect's associates intervenes and physically frees the suspect from the deputy's custody, preventing the lawful arrest from being completed, this action would be an act of rescous. The suspect was lawfully in custody, and their removal was an unlawful interference.

• Suppose a farmer's livestock, such as cattle, are found trespassing on a neighbor's property and causing damage. The neighbor, acting within their legal rights, impounds the cattle in a secure enclosure to hold them until compensation is paid or authorities intervene. If the farmer then breaks into the enclosure and takes their cattle back without resolving the issue through legal channels, this would be an act of rescous. The cattle were lawfully impounded, and their retrieval was an unlawful interference with that lawful custody.