obstructing process

OBSTRUCTING PROCESS. crim. law. The act by which one or more persons attempt 
to prevent, or do prevent, the execution of lawful process. 
     2. The officer must be prevented by actual violence, or by threatened 
violence, accompanied by the exercise of force, or by those having capacity 
to employ it, by which the officer is prevented from executing his writ; the 
officer is not required, to expose his person by a personal conflict with 
the offender. 2 Wash. C. C. R. 169. See 3 Wash. C. C. R. 335. 
     3. This is in offence against public justice of a very high and 
presumptuous nature; and more particularly so where the obstruction is of an 
arrest upon criminal process: a person opposing an arrest upon criminal 
process becomes thereby particeps criminis; that is, an accessary in felony, 
and a principal in high treason. 4 Bl. Com. 128; 2 Hawk. c. 17, s. 1; l. 
Russ. on Cr. 360: vide Ing. Dig. 159; 2 Gallis. Rep. 15; 2 Chit. Criminal 
Law, 145, note a.