Supreme Court Upholds Bar Fight Murder Conviction

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Officials in northern Minnesota say the state's Supreme Court has reversed an appeals court decision in the case of a deadly bar fight in 2011, and now a Proctor man will face his original sentence: 18 years in prison.

The St. Louis County Attorney's Office announced Wednesday that the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the original conviction of Paul Welle.

He had been convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter in the death 60-year-old Dale Anderson of Blaine. A criminal complaint said the two got into a fight after Welle was pressuring a woman to leave a bar with him.

Welle was said to have punched Anderson in the face, and when the older man collapsed, Welle fled the scene. Anderson died three days after being found outside the bar. He had suffered a skull fracture that caused a hemorrhage in his brain.

Last year, an appeals court overturned Welle's conviction, saying that the trial court had erred by improperly admitting evidence of Welle's prior crimes.

In the original trial, the state argued that Welle's self-defense claim was suspect because he had in the past made the same claim in circumstances where he was the aggressor.

The St. Louis County Attorney's Office says it and the state attorney general argued against the appeal decision.

In the end, the Supreme Court sided with the original conviction, concluding that "Welle's pattern of shifting the blame and falsely asserting self-defense is relevant to one or more of the elements of Welle's self-defense claim."