Thinking, fast and slow

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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For those who put themselves in risky situations — but sometimes also for those who are simply unlucky — danger arrives quickly and leaves little time to think. Reactions are instinctive.

A majority of justices on the Minnesota Supreme Court seem to have lost touch with that reality this week when they ruled that a person under attack can’t brandish a deadly weapon if it is “reasonably possible to retreat.” The ruling is an interpretation of the state’s self-defense law, and it strikes us as an example of legal principle diverging from the road people travel in real life.

Before going into the details, we can’t help lamenting a society that even needs so-called “stand your ground” laws backed by weaponry. Minnesota does not technically have a law that fits that description, because its self-defense statute has been interpreted by judges to include a “duty to retreat” if possible, a distinction that was a basis for this ruling. But many states do. The very phrase evokes a frontier mentality and a never-progressing populace — one with too little restraint and too much pride.

It’s not just about guns. The case the state Supreme Court was addressing — Minnesota vs. Earley Romero Blevins — stemmed from an altercation in downtown Minneapolis that involved a knife and a machete and perceptions that both were meant to be used.

Alongside that, we’re reminded of the news this week involving the stabbing two summers ago involving inner-tubers on the Apple River in western Wisconsin. Nicolae Miu of Prior Lake was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He had been convicted of killing a 17-year-old boy and wounding others during a confrontation that involved perceived threats, taunting words and then a knife. Prosecutors argued that he had opportunities to defuse or escape the situation.

In the Blevins case, the defendant had wielded the machete on a light-rail platform and had argued that he’d been threatened by three others, one of whom carried the knife. No one was physically hurt. The felony case accused the defendant of causing the fear of assault with a “device designed as a weapon and capable of producing death or great bodily harm.”

Justice Margaret Chutich wrote for the majority that it was “unsound” for the defense to suggest that a person need not avail themselves of a reasonable retreat and may brandish a weapon “in the uncertain hope that it will cause the initial aggressor to back down.” She called the ruling a “narrow” extension of the duty to retreat and wrote that fact-finding will still apply in future cases.

Expect the parameters to be tested.

In a dissent, Justice Paul Thissen wrote that “until now, the collective wisdom of judges nationwide over hundreds of years has never imposed a duty to retreat before making threats to deter an aggressor.” He added that the ruling does indeed take the question away from fact-finders. And bringing the argument closer to home for those who don’t walk around with a machete, he cited a theoretical example of a woman displaying pepper spray — which some states have concluded is a dangerous weapon — to deter an attacker. Is her behavior criminal if she did not first retreat?

As with any ruling parsing the meaning of a statute, this one carries a timeless message to legislators: Write clear laws. And another to voters: Elect legislators who can.

Yet the law can go only so far in addressing the hair trigger of human emotion. May it not be so, but there might come a moment for each of us to choose quickly between wisdom and instinct, with our well-being and that of others in the balance. What will we do?