State v. Strand

Defendant Strand and Clifford Dodd were convicted felons who were permitted to live outside the penitentiary in a halfway house. On November 21, 1976, they became involved in two altercations with each other. In the first, Strand sustained minor injuries. Dodd returned to a dining room table, where he continued working on his drawings. Strand went downstairs to a washroom to clean up the bleeding over his eye. No criminal charges resulted from that fight.

According to the State's theory, instead of this interval being a cooling-off period, Strand apparently became somewhat agitated. He went…