State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0879

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Curt Matthew Craven,
Appellant.

Filed April 16, 2018
Affirmed
Schellhas, Judge

Douglas County District Court
File No. 21-CR-16-1860

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Thomas A. Jacobson, Alexandria City Atto rney, Gregory F. Donahue, Assistant City
Attorney, Alexandria, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Sean Michael McGuire, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Schellhas, Pr esiding Judge; Halbrooks, Judge; and
Jesson, Judge.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
SCHELLHAS, Judge
Appellant challenges his misdemeanor assaul t conviction, arguing that he is entitled
to a new trial because the district court erred by instructing the jury that he had a duty to
retreat. We affirm.
FACTS
Appellant Curt Craven and J.P. were inma tes at the Douglas C ounty Jail. The jail
had “two separate tiers,” and a common area or “main day room” in the middle of the unit
with a couch, television, chairs, and tables. Craven resided in the upper tier of the jail, and
J.P. resided in the lower tier.
While Craven was in the common area and J.P. was locked in his lower-tier cell,
J.P. called Craven derogatory names such as “chomo,” which is prison slang for “child
molester.” J.P. also threat ened to kill Craven . Correctional Officer (CO) Theodore
Hellerman heard the commotion and removed Craven from the area. Craven then returned
to his cell “for a lockdown” and decided to confront J.P. physically. According to Craven,
he “planned” to assault J.P. because when “somebody threatens your life in [jail], that’s all
you have . . . and you don’t know if they’re going to take it seriously or not, so I just acted
upon it before he could act upon it to me.”
Later that night, Craven saw J.P. watchi ng television in the common area and called
to him. Although CO Hellerman told Craven to stop, Craven walked over to J.P. and began
hitting J.P. in the head with a closed fist. J.P. did not fight back and instead curled into a

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ball. Craven hit J.P. approximately a dozen times before CO Hellerman deployed a Taser
on Craven to end the assault.
Respondent State of Minnesota cited Craven for misdemeanor assault. The district
court conducted a jury trial on the charge and instru cted the jury on self-defense. At the
state’s request and over Craven’s objection, the court instructed the ju ry on the duty to
retreat. The jury found Craven guilty of the charged offense and the court sentenced Craven
to a stayed 60-day sentence. This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Craven argues that the district court e rred by instructing the jury on the duty to
retreat. Whether the duty to retreat applies in a particular case is a question of law that we
review de novo. State v. Devens, 852 N.W.2d 255, 257 (Minn. 2014).
A district court has “considerable latitud e” in the selection of language for jury
instructions. State v. Gatson, 801 N.W.2d 134, 147 (Minn. 2011) (quotation omitted). Jury
instructions must “fairly and adequa tely explain the law of the case.” State v. Ihle , 640
N.W.2d 910, 916 (Minn. 2002). A jury instruction is in error if it “materially misstates the
law.” Devens, 852 N.W.2d at 257.
The right of self-defense under Minnesota law provides, in part, that reasonable
force may be used upon another without the other’s consent “when used by any person in
resisting or aiding another to resist an o ffense against the person. ” Minn. Stat. § 609.06,
subd. 1(3) (2016). Th e Minnesota Supreme Court has interpreted section 609.06,
subdivision 1(3), to include the following four elements:

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(1) the absence of aggression or provocation on the part of the
defendant; (2) the defendant’s actual and honest belief that he
or she was in imminent danger of . . . bodily harm; (3) the
existence of reasonable grounds for that belief; and (4) the
absence of a reasonable possibi lity of retreat to avoid the
danger.

Devens, 852 N.W.2d at 258 (quoting State v. Basting , 572 N.W.2d 281, 285 −86 (Minn.
1997)). If a defendant meets the burden of going forward with evidence to support his self-
defense claim, the state has the burden to disprove, beyond a reasonable doubt, one or more
of the four elements. Id.
But evidence of the fourth element is not required when a defendant asserts that he
or she acted in self-defense in his own home. Glowacki, 630 N.W.2d at 402. This exception
to the duty to retreat, also kn own as the castle doctrine, is based on the principle that a
person’s home is a person’s place of greatest safety, and the law therefore does not expect
or require a person to retreat from his home. Devens, 852 N.W.2d at 258. In contrast, if a
person is outside of his home and can safely retreat, th e person’s use of force is
unreasonable as a matter of law. Id.
Craven asserts that because he was in jail, which “involves a controlled
environment,” whether he had access to his own room or the common room “was a function
of the jail’s rules and how they are applied in any given situation.” Craven argues that the
jail therefore was his home because he had no “‘ safe[] place’ to go when threatened with
bodily harm.” He contends that because his “ability to seek refuge in [his] personal space
is outside of [his] physical control, it was inappropriate to instruct the jury that [he] had a
‘duty to retreat.’” We disagree.

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In Devens, the defendant claimed self-defense re garding an incident that occurred
in the shared hallway of his apartment complex. Id. The supreme court declined to extend
the castle doctrine to the hallway and held that Devens had a duty to retreat into his
apartment unit if reasonably possible before using physical forc e in self-defense. Id. at
259−60. Our supreme court reasoned that the duty to retreat “presumes there is somewhere
safer to go—home.” Id. at 258. While giving some consideration to the role of “exclusive
possession and control” in determining th e bounds of “home,” the supreme court
emphasized that the castle doctrine is founded on the principle that the home is a person’s
“sanctuary,” “safest place,” and “critical for the protection of the family.” Id. at 258 −59
(quotation omitted). The supreme court then cited approvingly to New York’s limitation
of the castle doctrine to “a house, an apartment or part of a structure where [one] lives and
where others are ordinarily excluded—the antithesis of which is routine access to or use of
an area by strangers.” Id. at 259 (quoting People v. Hernandez, 774 N.E.2d 198, 203 (N.Y.
2002)).
Here, we acknowledge that a jail is a controlled environment. But the common area
where the assault occurred is more akin to the apartment hallway in Devens than a “home.”
The common area is a place where inmates congregate to watch television and interact with
one another. In contrast, Craven’s ce ll is similar to the apartment in Devens that the
supreme court concluded was Devens’ “safest place”; it was Craven’s living space where
he slept and where others were ordinarily excluded. Because Craven’s cell was his “safest
place” to retreat, the castle doctrine did not appl y, and the district court properly gave a
duty-to-retreat jury instruction.

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Even if the district court erred by giving th e duty-to-retreat jury instruction, the error
was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Koppi, 798 N.W.2d 358, 365 (Minn.
2011) (stating that a defendant is not entitled to a new trial if the erroneous jury instruction
was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt). The r ecord reflects that when Craven returned
from his jail program, he saw J.P. sitting in the common area watching television with his
back towards Craven. Despite CO Hellerman’s warning to Craven to stop, Craven walked
over to J.P. and repeatedly hit him in the head with a closed fist. The evidence shows that
Craven was the aggressor and easily disproves the first self-defense element: “the absence
of aggression or prov ocation on the part of the defendant.” Devens, 852 N.W.2d at 258
(quotation omitted). The law is well settled that the state “need only disprove beyond a
reasonable doubt at least one of the elements of self-defense.” State v. Radke, 821 N.W.2d
316, 324 (Minn. 2012). Because the evidence that disproves the first self-defense element
is overwhelming, any error in giving the duty-to-retreat jury instruction is harmless beyond
a reasonable doubt.
Affirmed.