Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A man was beating his girlfriend with a metal rod outside their Florida apartment. A neighbor saw it and spoke up. The man then attacked the neighbor. She shot him. He died. No charges were filed. Police said she had the right to defend the domestic abuse victim (Defense of Others) and also the right to Stand Her Ground to defend herself. Result: abuser dead, girl friend recovering, neighbor free to go.
That result could not happen here.
Minnesota is a Duty To Retreat state. Girlfriend had a Duty to Retreat from her boyfriend as he was beating her with the metal rod, if she could safely do so. Neighbor, when exercising the right of Defense of Others, “steps into her shoes” meaning if the jury decides girlfriend could have retreated, then girlfriend could not shoot abuser to stop his attack and neighbor can’t either.
When neighbor intervened and abuser attacked her, she had her own Duty to Retreat, if she could safely do so. And since abuser wasn’t originally attacking neighbor but only attacked her when she tried to stick up for domestic abuse victim, that makes neighbor the instigator of the confrontation between neighbor and abuser.
Lesson to learn: do not intervene to protect domestic abuse victims. Let the abuser beat her as long and as hard as he wants. Let the police clean up the mess when they arrive.
That’s the law in Minnesota, courtesy of Governor Dayton and DFL Rep. Paymar.
Joe Doakes
“Gun laws” aren’t about keeping people safer. They’re about keeping people subservient.
That’s as opposed to laws aimed at curbing crime, rather than people’s politically-incorrect lifestyle choices.
I love it when a story has a happy ending!
(and hopefully, the sensible areas of the state–those with a police chief not under the thumb of the Joyce Foundation–will quietly understand things a little better than do Mr. Paymar and Mr. Messinger)
Also, along the same lines, it’s worth remembering that that a “live in boyfriend” is one of the most dangerous men to a woman. I believe that the domestic violence rates for those “living in sin” are about 3x that of those who are married.
And it isn’t just heterosexual couples that this happens with, either. It’s funny how many GLBT incidents occur, but we don’t hear about them.
On another note, I wonder how Dayton and rat face would react if the victim was one of their relatives? I’m sure that they would press legal action against the neighbor for not doing something. Too many people don’t want to get involved, for that very reason.
The live-in boyfriend is even more a threat to the single-mom’s kids, and more yet to her pubescent daughters …