"This holding only applies to police officers who are acting in their official capacity and performing official duties. If they are not in their official capacity, you can batter them to your heart's content."
IF he doesn't identify himself as a police officer then your premise holds. If he does, it must be assumed by the homeowner at that time he is under official duty and you cannot resist him once his identity as a police officer is established. This is the crux of the argument, of course it is illegal to interfere with a police officer when he is performing his duties, that has always been the case. Boiled down this decision says "The homeowner cannot determine at the time of the search whether or not the search is legal. He MUST submit to it and file his grievance afterwords."
If a police officer goes to the wrong home address accidentally and performs search you cannot resist them even knowing full well that they are in the wrong, he is acting in his official capacity and lets face it, **** happens. This is to protect both the homeowner and the police officer, don't escalate the situation by resisting, go along with it and things will get ironed out later.
If your neighbor who is a cop comes home and finds his wife missing, and he suspects she is having an affair with you, if he walks into your house looking for her and you know he is a police officer You cannot resist the search, period. How do you know he didn't see her running into your house bleeding being chased by a guy with a knife? Absurd example I know, but it makes my point that the courts have determined that the officer is to be submitted to, your "opinion" of the legality of it is not an excuse to resist.
Determination of whether or not the search is legal, or whether he is under official capacity, cannot be determined by the homeowner at the time no matter how blatant the illegalities of it are. You can not resist, only submit and then report it later after he identifies himself as a police officer, period. This is the key to the whole argument here - Even in the case above knowing full well the officer was not acting in his official capacity, if you resist, you are guilty no matter what the outcome and punishment of the officer.
Most of the people here look at the ruling and think that it has closed all the doors to using the castle doctrine as a defense to a charge of battery against a police officer. However the job of a defense attorney is to look for ways around a law that their client has broken. In this case the court clearly left a door open for the use of the defense if it can be proven that the police officer was not acting in his official duties or that the officer was acting outside the course and scope of his legal duties as a safety officer.
The visceral reaction of most of the posters here is not the way you analyze a statute if you are a defense attorney or even a judge. The defense attorney will look for loopholes and jump through them. In this case the court left open a small loophole which, if given the right set of facts, is big enough to drive a Mack truck through.
If it is shown that the police officer was acting on a personal errand, such as looking for his cheating wife, then a homeowner could use the defense. It won’t mean he won’t be arrested and charged, but a good defense attorney can raise the defense given the proper facts.
Most of the posters here, I suspect, are just armchair law students or not schooled in legal analysis at all. FWIW, I am an attorney. I see a loophole in the opinion. As a rule, that is what people pay me to find. That is what lawyers do. You can argue that the decision closes the door, but the door is not locked, and the back door is still wide open.
What if the homeowner asserts a belief that the person was a robber wearing a stolen or fake police uniform, given that there have been documented cases of robbers doing precisely that?