'Kyle did nothing wrong'? or the crimes of the Kenosha Shooter
POSTED BY: JAYNEZTOWN
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 18, 2024 14:44
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Analysis: Here's why Kyle Rittenhouse is likely to be acquitted — and why the law on self-defense must change
by John Gross | Wisconsin Law School
Gross is director of the Public Defender Project at the Wisconsin Law School at UW–Madison.
In the Rittenhouse case, I expect that the jury will not be convinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in large part because of the way the law defines self-defense.
The issue to be decided in a criminal trial is extremely specific: Did the prosecution prove every element of the offense or offenses charged beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury is only permitted to render one of two verdicts: guilty or not guilty. By finding a defendant not guilty a jury is not saying that the defendant is innocent. Innocent isn’t an option. The jury is not deciding whether someone is morally blameworthy, they are deciding whether a legal standard has been met.
In the current state of the law, Rittenhouse is not barred from claiming the privilege of self-defense because he illegally possessed a firearm. He is also not barred from claiming the privilege of self-defense because he was violating a curfew order. While many people feel that carrying an AR-15 assault rifle in public is dangerous and invites confrontation, Wisconsin is one of many “open carry” states where parading down a public street with a military-style assault rifle is permitted.
If the jury acquits Rittenhouse, then they will be doing what the law requires them to do. That should prompt us to ask why the law dictates this result, and how the law might be changed to discourage people from resorting to deadly force -- and if they do, to hold them more accountable.
We could deny the right to act in self-defense to people who illegally possess a weapon and are in a place where they are not allowed to be. We could also restore the requirement that before someone has the right to use deadly force, they have a duty to retreat. Recently, state legislatures have been doing the opposite, eliminating the duty to retreat by passing “stand your ground” laws.
We could make self-defense an affirmative defense that must be proven by the defense by clear and convincing evidence, not disproven beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution. One of the challenges facing prosecutors in the Rittenhouse case is that once the issue of self-defense is raised, the law requires them to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense. It is fair and reasonable to require that the person who felt privileged to use self-defense bear the burden of persuading the jury that they acted in self-defense.
We could make self-defense a complete defense to a charge of homicide only when the threat to the person’s safety is obvious and immanent. The law now permits a person to use deadly force if they reasonably believed it was necessary even if that belief was mistaken. The law also does not require that a person wait until the last second to use deadly force. Police officers who shoot unarmed people of color often rely on this argument to justify their use of deadly force. They never see the barrel of a gun but claim that under all the surrounding circumstances they reasonably believed that someone was armed.
We could prohibit testimony that the defendant feared that the weapon they were carrying could be used against them. This is also a claim that police officers make when they have a physical altercation with someone who is unarmed. It was one of the claims that Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey made to investigators when attempting to justify his shooting of Jacob Blake. It would also address the fear that is instilled in people when others decide to openly carry assault weapons.
If the jury acquits Rittenhouse, it will not be a mistake. They will have properly applied the law to the facts of the case. If you think a verdict of “not guilty” was the wrong result, your quarrel is not with the jurors who decide the case but with the law as it is written. That law is not set in stone. It is dictate
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Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Was Strong. It’s Also a Threat to the Rule of Law.
Rittenhouse’s killing of Rosenbaum may have been lawful. But that was scarcely self-evident to the bystanders who heard gunshots and then saw a killer holding an AR-15. The group of protesters who proceeded to chase and attack Rittenhouse could have reasonably believed that killing the armed teenager was necessary to save others from imminent bodily harm. If Rittenhouse had a right to shoot Huber and Grosskreutz in self-defense, the latter had a similarly legitimate basis for shooting Rittenhouse dead.
Put differently: Once Rittenhouse fired his first shots, he and his attackers plausibly entered a context in which neither could be held legally liable for killing the other. Whether one emerged from this confrontation legally innocent or lawfully executed hinged on little more than one’s relative capacity for rapidly deploying lethal violence. Rittenhouse had a more powerful weapon and a quicker trigger finger than Huber or Grosskreutz. Thus, he may well walk free, in full health, while Huber lies in a grave and Grosskreutz gets by without the bulk of his right bicep.
This outbreak of “Wild West” rule isn’t as anomalous as one might hope. America’s culture of vigilantism, high rate of gun ownership, and increasingly permissive self-defense laws have conspired to turn “kill or be killed” scenarios into a regular occurrence.
The culture that turned the 17-year-old into a revered killer — a culture of mass firearm ownership and vigilantism — is antithetical to law and order as it is conventionally understood. It is a culture premised on the illegitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence and the incapacity of formal institutions to uphold social order or public safety. It sees America as a society forever teetering on the brink of Hobbesian breakdown (“war of every man against every man,” a constant and violent condition of competition in which each individual has a natural right to everything, regardless of the interests of others) and firearms as the sole guarantor of individual security. And the more influential this culture becomes, the more its paranoid delusions come to resemble our collective reality.
“Legally kill or legally be killed” scenarios are just one of several pathological consequences of America’s lax gun regulations, and permissive police use of force and/or self-defense laws.
More at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/rittenhouse-jury-verdict-self-
defense-legal-analysis.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Jury finds Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582382-jury-finds-kyle-ritten
house-not-guilty-on-all-counts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The soap opera?
Visibly shaking Kyle Rittenhouse breaks down upon hearing not guilty verdict
https://www.bitchute.com/video/z8WjgGry0_E/
Tulsi Gabbard (D) Hawaii
Jury got it right finding Rittenhouse not guilty
https://rumble.com/vphw1y-jury-got-it-right-finding-rittenhouse-not-gu
ilty.html
BLM protestor suffers mind seizure
https://www.bitchute.com/video/CNlJYVOPQK1X/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Was Strong. It’s Also a Threat to the Rule of Law.
Rittenhouse’s killing of Rosenbaum may have been lawful. But that was scarcely self-evident to the bystanders who heard gunshots and then saw a killer holding an AR-15.
Which just goes to show that jumping to mistaken conclusions can lead to Lynch mobs.
Quote:Was he threatening THEM? Or do you like mob rule and unreasonable action?
A group of protesters who proceeded to chase and attack Rittenhouse could have reasonably believed that killing the armed teenager was necessary to save others from imminent bodily harm. If Rittenhouse had a right to shoot Huber and Grosskreutz in self-defense, the latter had a similarly legitimate basis for shooting Rittenhouse dead.
Quote:Somebody fired into the air. That set off the melee. But Rittenhouse was responding to ACTUAL THREAT, the others were operating on apparently mistaken assumptions. That makes Rittenhouse's the more accurate response, and therefore lawful. If the others could point to anACTUAL THREAT, they, too would be lawful.
Put differently: Once Rittenhouse fired his first shots, he and his attackers plausibly entered a context in which neither could be held legally liable for killing the other. Whether one emerged from this confrontation legally innocent or lawfully executed hinged on little more than one’s relative capacity for rapidly deploying lethal violence. Rittenhouse had a more powerful weapon and a quicker trigger finger than Huber or Grosskreutz. Thus, he may well walk free, in full health, while Huber lies in a grave and Grosskreutz gets by without the bulk of his right bicep.
Quote:You just don't like our legal system
This outbreak of “Wild West” rule isn’t as anomalous as one might hope. America’s culture of vigilantism, high rate of gun ownership, and increasingly permissive self-defense laws have conspired to turn “kill or be killed” scenarios into a regular occurrence.
It is what PREVENTS lynch mobs and Wild West mentality, by rewarding reasoned response and (hopefully) punishing unreasoned ones.
Quote:
blah blah blah blah
And cue SECOND's defense of the rioters that will follow in 3... 2 ... 1...
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:I am very pleased with the jury's decision, but I expected it in less than a hour. The jury went off on an unnecessary tangent about reviewing the video. Such a waste of time. The primary thing that counts in the law of self-defense as it was written was whether the defendant "feels" threatened. The law doesn't use that exact formulation, but that is what it boils down to in an American courtroom.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And cue SECOND's defense of the rioters that will follow in 3... 2 ... 1...
The law requires the prosecution to prove the defendant did NOT "feel" threatened. Hard to prove that. If the defendant says he "feels" threatened, the defendant goes free. Sometimes the defendant does not take the oath because they can't convincingly fake for the jury the "feeling" of being threatened, so defense witnesses and experts testify to what the defendant was "feeling". Prosecution can't break down that barrier unless the murderer is instinctively hated by a jury or the prosecution had at least three telepathic psychics at the scene of the murder testify about what the murderer was actually feeling before, during, and after the murder.
In a Civil trial for damages, the murderer's "feelings" count for nothing. If Kyle Rittenhouse is sued for wrongful death, he might lose. That's what happened to O.J. Simpson, who was declared not guilty of murder, but was successfully sued for $33.5 million in damages. O.J. didn't pay much because he moved to another state and declared bankruptcy, but that is just how the legal system habitually malfunctions in America. Rittenhouse has a much weaker Civil case than O.J. because everybody saw Rittenhouse murder his victims but nobody saw O.J. pull the trigger. On the other hand, Rittenhouse has zero assets to be seized, other than the AR-15. Win or lose, Rittenhouse won't pay much. His lawyers will certainly prosper if Trumptards raise the money for his defense in Civil court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case#Civil_trial
How often does a self-defense case end with guilty verdict?
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+often+does+a+self-defense+case+end
+with+guilty+verdict%3F
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I am very pleased with the jury's decision
Bullshit.
Dozens of your ignorant posts in this thread say otherwise.
Second spent all day long crying today.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2020:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Kyle ain't even getting a slap on the wrist for this.
That's fair warning to any other would-be murderers out there.
You get what you fucking deserve.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Now he gets to sue everybody all the way up to Fuck Joe Biden for slandering his name.
Cast a wide net, Kyle.
Maybe you and Sandmann can come to an agreement and share custody of CNN and MSNBC.
P.S....
JANUARY 6TH, 2021:
Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Kyle ain't even getting a slap on the wrist for this.
Another prediction?
He's on trial btw
ALSO, JANUARY 6TH, 2021:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. A lot of innocent people get put on trial.
Are you insinuating that he's guilty because he's on trial?
I certainly hope not.
He'll be fine.
To which, of course, I got no reply.
Here's your I Told You So from the bag.
They're free, but you're welcome to get on your knees now and blow me too.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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And Justice prevails:
https://nypost.com/2021/11/19/kyle-rittenhouse-acquitted-of-all-charge
s-in-kenosha-shooting/
There were some details that I had forgotten, or learned.
Criminal pedophile serial boy rapist Rosenbaum announced that he would kill Kyle because Rosenbaum had set a trash dumpster on fire, and was wheeling it to the police vehicles to set the police on fire, and then Kyle used his fire extinguisher to put out the fire in the dumpster. This incensed Rosenbaum that his arson was extinguished, and he announced he was going to kill Kyle.
Rosenbaum was not scared off by being shot, so he was shot 4 times.
One of the attackers that Kyle shot at (but missed) was known as jump-kick-man, who kicked Kyle in the head. This was violent criminal Maurice Freeland, which Prosecutors kept hidden until the end of the trial.
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Yeah. Just hope those jurors got some good security.
The Lunatic Left is out to get them.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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