Kyle Rittenhouse Trial and the Law of Self-Defense

Yes. I am pretty sure most of the time judges can set aside verdicts in criminal cases. It almost never happens. I cannot think of a situation where the judge does not have that option on the table in a standard criminal trial. It almost never happens and it likely won’t here.

Conceivable, sure. A gun that can hit the moon from earth is conceivable, but it’s a very low probability. There is always threat level white noise associated with high tension situations like this. But the preponderance of credible threats of violence are coming from the left.
The Cauvin trial was the litmus test for this. If any case would have exploded into riots from acquittal it’s that one. But he was found guilty, so no riots.

The outside threat situation is something that the court needs to take into consideration and address. Sequestering in cases like this is a must. You can instruct the jury all you want, outside of your view, they can do what they want. Search what they want, watch what they want, talk to others about the case if they want.
This jury has every right and reason to be scared and that cannot be good for the verdict. The court gave no assurances to the jurors that they would be protected regardless of outcome. So the jurors get to deliberate inside a courthouse that is being protested, of course they hear the protests. And the know the magnitude of the decision they are making.
I would not be surprised if the jury is perhaps trying to split the baby down the middle and that’s what is taking so long. Make him guilty of lesser charges, because it most definitely was not murder, to appease the crowd.

I was called to jury duty a couple of weeks ago. When they are assembling juries, they are not looking for the best and brightest. The are looking for the clueless and unaware. I was dismissed quickly, possibly because I spoke english very well. Many in the jury room were not english speaking, at least not fluently. And most of those were picked.

If I were Kyle, knowing I had a reasonable judge, I would have chosen a bench trial since I couldn’t get change of venue. I think the legal questions are pretty much self evident in Kyle’s favor. And you don’t have the wild card of potentially poisoned, paid off, activist, threatened or otherwise compromised jury.

Someone with no clue at the NYT?! Who would have thunk it!
Trust in media, in the U.S. is the lowest of most western counties. Someone released a study the other day, that out of like 46 countries, the U.S. ranked the lowest in media trust out of all of them.

That’s usually the argument. “I don’t like them, therefore you should not have something I don’t like.” This is where you get shit like “My truth” and garbage like that. Since actual truth and facts do not support what you say, you create a new, much lower standard for truth, only you have to believe it.

I absolutely disagree. They know and they know well what is going on outside. They fucked up by not addressing it directly in court. Pretending it’s not there doesn’t make it go away. And pretending that it’s not going to affect deliberations is just idiotic. It was absolutely incumbent on the defense to make that jury feel as safe as possible and to my knowledge it wasn’t even brought up.
And who knows what the jurors experience at home. There are recordings of the jury out there already, coming and going to and from the court house. Activist types have already expressed publicly, their intent to hurt jurors if the verdict doesn’t go the right way. If we cannot protect the jury from violence or threats of violence, what’s left of the justice system is done.

You cannot make this shit up:

This case is a circus. A mistrial would be a prudent decision at this point. Why is a journalist following the jury bus? There cannot be a good explanation for doing something expressly forbidden by the court unless you are up to no good.
These jurors aren’t scared enough? You’re going to use the power of corporate media to do what? Put the fear of the leftist state into the jurors?
Half the country could be turned into tinder by issuing a politically unpleasant verdict. And you got major “news” organizations behaving like teenagers, at best. At worst, exposing the jurors to the very people who will want their head if they issue a not guilty verdict.

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I don’t purport to know what his lawyers are thinking, but overall, I think they’ve done a pretty good job in representing him. I can’t imagine that they would fully understand the tension in the air over the verdict, and the risk that it might affect the jury, and just decide to not do anything about it.

Andrew McCarthy, a lawyer who supplies excellent legal analysis for National Review, has an article addressing this very topic that was just released. It is behind a pay wall, so I can’t link to it, but here are his observations:

“Meantime, with each passing hour, it is more likely that the case is headed for a mistrial because of a hung jury. If that happens, it will very likely be because jurors were intimidated — believing that an acquittal of Rittenhouse, even if compelled by the evidence, would ignite more of the same violent rioting that led to Rittenhouse’s fateful confrontations on August 25, 2020.”

" It appears that Schroeder made up his mind before the trial that there would be no sequestration, and he is mulishly sticking to that. As the local and national publicity intensified, as the protests boiled into violence, the judge continued sending the jurors home to marinate in the tension. Even as they are deliberating — the critical time when good judges go the extra mile to shield the jury — Schroeder calls it a day at dusk and sends them out of the courthouse, past the beleaguered police trying to control mobs with the “Killer Kyle” placards and “F*** Kyle” T-shirts . . . only to come back through the same scene the next morning.

And now, whaddya know: We have a straightforward case of self-defense in which a verdict can’t seem to be reached . . . under circumstances in which the jurors are being pressured . . . and the mob promises to riot if there is an acquittal."

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I wonder whether an 18-year-old is thinking, “The rest of my life is in the hands of people too stupid to get out of jury duty”?

Edit: And how many outside of the courthouse know that Rittenhouse didn’t shoot a single black person? How many think he shot a black guy that was just going to his car?

Zero obvious bias in that piece haha.

Of course he admits that he believes Rittenhouse should be acquitted, but overall I thought his piece was pretty objective. He acknowledges that his speculation is just that at this point, and it’s possible that the jury is just carefully considering the evidence. But you have to admit that the factual evidence in this case is pretty cut and dried, and the jury has been instructed on the law of self-defense. It’s hard to imagine what exactly there is to talk about for three days.

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Idk. By the law strictly it would seem NG. But I can understand jurors feeling that Rittenhouse’s actions were unjustifiably immoral and so he should not be found totally NG. Essentially them struggling with the letter of the law vs their moral compass.

Juror instructions, and how those are communicated by the clerk can be very important.

I talked my my ex clerk inhouse counsel and she said judges very rarely sequester the jury, even in high profile cases. Her judge included. She didn’t know why.

Also, fwiw I saw numerous articles during the trial, including fox, talking about the surprising lack of protestors and in person public interest outside the courthouse during the trial so the authors hyperbolic descriptions of the scene outside the courthouse would seem disengeniuous. They blamed the cold haha.

The law and perceived morality from an individualistic standpoint don’t coincide

The law is the law, and to pass a verdict on the basis of your moral compass whilst tossing aside the actual legislature pertaining to the conduct you are passing a verdict on is immoral within itself.

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The ideal vs. reality. It’s why trial attorneys appeal to emotion all the time.

Seems like the crux issue is whether the jury believes Rittenhouse was legitimately scared for his life, or if he went there looking for a fight and/or fired his rifle out of anything except fear for his life/limb. Is that right?

An interesting take at LI speculating that the foreperson may be the holdout. Again, just speculation, but interesting.

In my jurisdiction (Indiana), juries are required to be sequestered in criminal cases once deliberations begin. If this trial were here, these jurors would be going to a hotel every night.

Seems like that should be the norm. I don’t see the downside other than cost/space?

How brave! I just hope, if true, they make a movie about her and her stand for…well, against truth and justice.

To decide “guilty” based on your feels makes you a piece of shit(but that’s not a strong enough term to describe someone who does that). To decide “not guilty” because you disagree with the law or potential punishment is fine.

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Brah, I couldn’t agree more. Been saying this since the beginning and the trial hasn’t brought anything in to change my opinion.

I’ve long been baffled by the “crossed state lines” comment. This is the US. State lines? The fuck does that matter? He lived 20 minutes away and has all kinds of ties to that town including the fact it’s where his father lives and where he worked. At least one of the guys who attacked him and died for the effort came from 3 times farther away.

The first guy he shot had been released THAT DAY from the hospital subsequent to a suicide attempt. Long history of mental health issues and violence. I’d probably be suicidal too if I got my jollies by ass-raping 10 year old boys (which Rosenbaum was convicted of)

But still…holy fuck…he (Kyle) in going down there basically accepted an invitation to a gunfight. “Hey, let’s go stand in front of a business with rifles while the city burns”. Fawk that shit!

He was never an “active shooter” - he didn’t shoot (at) anyone who didn’t attack him first. In all cases he was running away (or trying to) from the people he ended up shooting.

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Idk, I think he was in over his head and made a serious of stupid decisions

Is that worthy of a homicide charge? No… Is that worthy of some kind of reprimanding? Yes…

Do I want him to go to prison? No

Do I want him to have the rest of his life ruined due to a criminal record? No…

Do I want him to receive a fine, probation, a good behaviour bond etc… Yes…

We agree on that. Probation, some civil service are fine as a punishment for the boy. After all there are people that died. I am also pretty sure the boy is now fucked up mentally and he needs monitoring and some help.

For what crime?

From the article: “Under Wisconsin law, you can kill people in self-defense if you reasonably believe that doing so is necessary to spare yourself or others from imminent bodily harm or death. This belief need not be accurate. Nor must it be reasonable from an objective perspective. It only needs to be reasonable from the subjective point of view of the shooter in the moment he or she pulls the trigger.

There is one caveat to this rule: If you engage “in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack,” then you can’t kill the attackers whom your unlawful actions provoked. (Though even here there is some ambiguity, as Wisconsin’s statute appears to directly contradict itself.)

It is legal in Wisconsin for a 17-year-old to openly carry an AR-15, as Rittenhouse did. Thus, to nullify his eligibility for self-defense, Rittenhouse likely would have had to provoke Rosenbaum through some concrete act.”

Is that the reason for the fixation on the idea that Rittenhouse may have been violating a law by carrying a weapon? Carrying a weapon is NOT “unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack.” That’s absurd. What the hell is wrong with people?

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