Jurors have acquitted a man of murder after he argued that he acted in self-defense when he shot a man during a late-night clash involving several people outside a downtown Minneapolis bar.
Man who claimed self-defense acquitted of murder for shooting outside downtown Minneapolis bar
The shooting occurred during a verbal confrontation in June 2021.
February 17, 2023 at 3:32PM
A Hennepin County District Court jury on Thursday found Kevion J. Gibbs, 23, of West Point, Miss., not guilty on two counts of second-degree intentional murder in connection with the shooting of Deandre I. Smith, 33, of Minneapolis, in a parking lot after leaving Augie's Bar on Hennepin Avenue shortly after 2 a.m. on June 5, 2021.
The trial began on Feb. 7 with the selection of the jurors, who began deliberating midday Wednesday and came back with their verdicts the next day.
"The case was all about self-defense," Gibbs' lead attorney, Fred Goetz, said Friday. "He tried and tried and tried to get away, but he had no choice."
Gibbs, who testified in his defense, made "persistent and continual efforts to get his family away [from the others]. That's all he was doing for 15 minutes. Every time he got away, they kept pursuing him. It just kept getting more violent and more violent."
Goetz said Gibbs was leaving Augie's with his sisters, a brother and his pregnant girlfriend, when the brother was punched and "knocked to the ground. They thought he was dead. He was lying there motionless."
A spokesman for the County Attorney's Office said that members of Smith's family "were understandably very upset" when they heard the verdicts being read.
"As for the defense case, this was a chaotic scene after bar close," spokesman Nicholas Kimball said. "A verbal altercation escalated and a punch was thrown, making the scene even more chaotic. In that environment, the defendant made the tragic decision to pull out a handgun and shoot.
"Our theory was this was retaliation for the punch, and the defendant claimed self-defense. With the self-defense claim, it was the state's burden to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. We had a key witness not appear when he was to testify and, ultimately, the jury determined we did not meet the burden of disproving self-defense."
In their criminal complaint, prosecutors said that Smith punched Gibbs' brother and started running, and that's when Gibbs wounded Smith with two or three shots from about 5 feet away. Smith died barely 20 minutes later at HCMC.
Metro Transit officers who happened to be nearby chased and shot Gibbs in the leg. He was arrested, and his gun was recovered.
Gibbs was overwhelmed with emotion and "broke down" upon hearing the verdicts, Goetz said.
Gibbs is a supervisor at a tire factory in Mississippi, has since married his girlfriend, and he has five children and another on the way.
"All he wants to do is get back to his family," the defense attorney said.
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