Tennessee Supreme Court Adopts Conditional “No Retreat” Analysis

By Ammoland Editor Joe Evans

USA -(Ammoland.com)- The Tennessee Supreme Court has issued a new opinion on the issue of when and under what circumstances the statutory “right” of self-defense is available. The opinion is State of Tennessee v. Antoine Perrier, W2015-01642-SC-R11-CD and was released on November 21, 2017.

As summarized by the Court, these are the issues:

We granted the defendant’s application for permission to appeal in this case with direction to the parties to particularly address the following issues: (1) the meaning of the phrase “not engaged in unlawful activity” in the self-defense statute, Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-11-611, and (2) whether the trial court or the jury decides whether the defendant was engaged in unlawful activity. We hold that the legislature intended the phrase “not engaged in unlawful activity” in the self-defense statute to be a condition of the statutory privilege not to retreat when confronted with unlawful force and that the trial court should make the threshold determination of whether the defendant was engaged in unlawful activity when he used force in an alleged self-defense situation. We further conclude that the defendant’s conduct in this case constituted unlawful activity for …Read the Rest

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