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