The state’s high court, in a 4–2 decision, found that a person who is being attacked or threatened must retreat if ’reasonably possible’
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in a split decision that a person who is being attacked or threatened must retreat if “reasonably possible” instead of brandishing a weapon.
The court upheld two second-degree convictions of assault with a deadly weapon against a man who was armed with a machete who alleged that he was threated by another man with a knife at a light rail station in Minneapolis in 2021.
A 4–2 decision, issued Wednesday by the state’s high court, said that Minnesota law stipulates that there is a “duty to retreat” when reasonably possible before using deadly force. That applies when the person faces bodily harm, the judges ruled.
In its decision Wednesday, the state court wrote that the “duty to retreat when reasonably possible—a judicially created element of self-defense—applies to persons who claim they were acting in self-defense when they committed the felony offense of second-degree assault-fear with a device designed as a weapon and capable of producing death or great bodily harm.”
The plaintiff in the case, Earley Romero Blevins, brandished a machete after a man with a knife allegedly threated him at a rail station in Minnesota. The man approached Blevins as he was arguing with a woman, according to Blevins, who said that the man armed with the knife told him to come to a shelter at the station so he “could slice” his throat.
Blevins had argued that he feared for his life and was acting in self-defense when he produced the machete, according to the ruling. The justices, however, said that after they reviewed video footage of the incident, they found that he had ample opportunity to leave the situation.
Blevins further said that he was trying to fend off three people, including the woman he was arguing with and the man who threatened him with a knife as well as another man. Blevins said that he waved his macheted at the three until they left. No one was injured in the incident.
