Or a white hood? They are morally equivalent. And equally to be feared.
Well, with the right to self defense you better be damn sure who you are attacking is not someone who ought not be attacked. Logically, the only way those who can legitimately attack the so-called shooter in either situation is if one accepts the axiomatic premise that there does indeed exist a right to self defense. So these scenarios aren’t really illustrative of any deep principle.
From other cases that I have seen (e.g. of a group of people accused together of some murders), the individual murders are technically treated as independent events. It’s entirely possible to list them all out, for each to have its own circumstances, and to be decided upon separately (during the same trial).
The circumstances of the case may be that once you’ve decided one, you’ve decided the rest. But, likewise, there could be a whole variety of events that unfolded in tandem - self-defense, misadventure, homicide, etc. - that should be deliberated separately. Say, for example, that Ritter kills the first two in self defense, 20 people get angry and charge him to attack, crossing a train track and getting themselves killed when a train suddenly appears out of nowhere, and then Ritter turns into a maniac who has decided that the gods are on his side, and goes on a spree, ruthlessly murdering 8 people who were running away.
It would just depend on how good the evidence is and the particulars of the case. There is no one rule. But the charges are, likely, on a person-by-person basis and there’s nothing to stop the jury from deliberating in that way.
In both examples your conclusions are correct, but with some caveats.
They do not fall like dominoes–each individual event has to be assessed based on its own merits. Self-defense is an affirmative defense, in each of those 29 shootings, the defendant would have to demonstrate they had a reasonable fear of danger to life and limb, and in a state without a stand your ground law would also have to demonstrate they could not otherwise extricate themselves from the situation. In real life of course such a large number of serial self-defense incidents would be extremely unlikely, to say the least.
There is also a concept that your exercise of self-defense has some limits of reasonableness/proportionality, too. As an extreme example, let’s say I’m driving down the road, slowly, with my car window rolled down. A car jacker leaps halfway into the driver’s side of my car and starts assaulting me and trying to stab me. I’m parked near a large crowd of school children participating in a local festival, I conclude that if I drive through the children, their bodies impacting into my assailant may dislodge him. I proceed to run over some 25 kids before he falls off. While I may have had a right to self-defense, I do not have the right to unlimited behavior under that aegies.
This is wrong. It has to be, according to pretty much any self defense law I’ve read, and according to the applicable Wisconsin law, an imminent threat of unlawful deadly force. If you know you just shot someone in a bank robbery, and you are still holding your gun and not surrendering, you likely know that it is lawful for people to be pointing their guns at you.
The reason the Rittenhouse case is trickier is because, if Rittenhouse thought he shot Rosenbaum in self defense, and perceived the others as coming after him vindictively, then what he believed might be more complicated.
I think the real takeaway is that if you’re going to attack a guy with a gun based on the notion that he’s an “active shooter”, then have some solid basis for thinking he’s actually an active shooter.
In this case, it would appear that while the two subseuent guys who got shot may have assumed that Rittenhouse was an “active shooter”, they didn’t have any real basis for this assumption. Best as I can tell, they didn’t really see the initial shooting, at least close enough to figure out what happened. Best guess is that their assumption that Rittenhouse was an “active shooter” was primarily driven by their knowledge that Rosenbaum was on their side of the demonstrations/riots and that Rittenhouse was on the other side. Not a solid basis for attacking a guy with a gun.
Also worth noting in this specific context that the three guys who got shot were not a bunch of pacifists drawn against their nature to come to the defense of the world against this “active shooter”. To the contrary, they were a collection of violent thugs, child abusers, and mentally ill people. So there’s reason to believe that these guys were particularly apt to jump the gun on the “active shooter” assumption, and not really much reason to assume based on this incident that a normal person has such a hard time figuring it out.
It is generally quite rare for two people to have a reasonable belief that another person is a threat and a right to act on it, for example if you try to rob someone and he pulls out his personal firearm to shoot you–you don’t actually have a right to shoot him, if you happen to be faster and kill him you’re going away for robbery and murder. The fact he tried to defend himself doesn’t give you the right to murder him, because you precipitated the whole event by attempting to rob him.
Likewise in a case of mistaken identity, where say a person has just shot and killed a man trying to rob him, and a Good Samaritan attempts to affect a citizen’s arrest, you still only have the right to self-defense if you fear for life or limb. If the prosecution can demonstrate to a jury that the Good Samaritan you shot was behaving in a way that made it obvious, they only intended to detain you, and not assault you, it would likely significantly undermine your right to self-defense. In the Rittenhouse case both of the two men whom he shot that were presumably attempting to “stop” him because they thought he was an active shooter, were behaving very violently with deadly weapons. They also were not saying (as far as we know) or behaving in ways that indicated they were attempting to make a non-violent arrest.
For example, going back to our robbery victim-and-self-defense shooter, imagine the Good Samaritan isn’t a civilian, but a peace officer, who identifies himself as such and tells him to lay down his gun, and to surrender. Even though he has not committed a crime in the shooting, he has no right to resist that arrest, he can dispute the charges in court.
Self-defense can, and often is, complicated, though. For example, in the robbery situation, a man with a gun on me that I out-draw and shoot dead, I’m likely getting off on self-defense in all 50 states–even states with a duty to retreat–that duty is subject to reasonableness, and with a gun on you the authorities would be loath to suggest you had any meaningful means of escape. But let’s say I draw on him, and shot, but my bullet strikes his gun hand, sending the gun flying and he keeps coming at me swinging his fist with his good arm/hand. In that scenario I likely could still argue further self-defense even in a duty to retreat state because fists are properly understood to be dangerous and there isn’t usually an expectation that you just have to let someone beat your face in. It would then be evaluated as to whether you thought you could back away or not (in a stand your ground state that would not be a consideration.) Now let’s say you shoot again, this time you hit him in his leg, and now he falls to the ground and cannot walk. But this is a determined robber, slowly crawling towards you with his one good arm and leg, he snarls and starts trying to bite at your feet. In that scenario it’s much less likely you would still be found to have a right to self-defense if you shot him dead while he writhed around ont he ground like a madman.
The other takeaway would be: Don’t attack a guy with a gun, unless you also have a gun or can leap over buildings in a single bound.
Appreciate your response (and others). But now I’m ignorant of the law re: fall like dominoes in scenario 1 and Ritter getting to claim each successive killing as possibly in self-defense.
To be clear, Ritter’s intent was to murder the first person and it was not in self defense. The jury has no reasonable doubt about that. 29 other people think he is an active shooter (ie, going to kill more people because that’s what active shooter means). So in that instant, Ritter is a murderer, with a gun, who 29 people think is going to murder other people. And Ritter is still allowed to claim self defense after that?
He could be found guilty of 8 murders, but not guilty by reason of self defense for 22 others. 29 murders, the last was in self defense, though. Right? Each judged independently because that’s what the law is?
When are you not allowed to raise self defense when you intend to kill someone?
My u derstanding is that if someone is killed while you are committing a crime, you don’t even have to be the one who killed them to be held responsible. A getaway driver for a bank robnery may personally abhor killing, be unarmed, and still be charged as at least an accessory to murder if someone is killed during the robbery.
Also, I think if you try to rob someone and they pull a gun on you and attempt to shoot you and you shoot them first, you are still guilty even though it was him or you. You’re the one who committed a crime that started it and made the other person feel the need to defend himself.
In the middle of the defense arguing that the prosecution is deliberately trying to provoke a mistrial, the judge’s phone went off to the tune of “God Bless the USA”, which is practically the MAGA national anthem. It was sung at Trump’s inauguration.
Just in case you had any doubt that the judge is biased towards the defendant.
No. Under this hypo, Ritter committed a murder. The other 29 people are permitted by law to subdue him/make a citizen’s arrest. He is not privileged to use self defense because his initial murder made him the aggressor.
It is wrong. And I admit that I didn’t change the facts from the comment I was responding to and gave an incorrect impression.
Self defense is complicated, and the details of the laws might vary some. One thing that can make it complicated is that, typically, what matters is not the reality of the situation, which many times can’t be discerned until after the fact, but instead what a person believes about the situation, and whether it was reasonable to believe that.
So, did the defendant believe the use of force against him was unlawful and threatening death or grievous bodily injury, and was his belief reasonable. The instances are evaluated separately, but not in a vacuum. The jury gets to consider that the defendant had already killed x people when he formed his belief. Is it still reasonable to believe everyone is out to get you after killing that number of people? Or, once x people have attacked you, is it more reasonable to think everyone is out to get you? Whatever influence those prior actions might have on the circumstances and the defendant’s belief can be considered.
The jury just doesn’t get to retroactively say, the first killing wasn’t self defense, therefore all the other claims of self defense fail. But they can reason, defendant intentionally killed A, therefore he knew everyone there telling him to put his gun down and his hands up, and pointing their gun at him is acting lawfully.
You can sometimes have multiple people who could claim self defense in attacking each other. The point is that the law will not blame someone for defending themselves when they reasonably believe they are being unlawfully attacked. Usually that proposition is not particularly controversial.
One addition to your hypothetical that might be useful to keep in mind – in the case where a person has a sincere actual belief that they are at risk of grievous bodily injury or death from an imminent or current unlawful use of force, but a jury finds that belief to be unreasonable, the person is typically guilty of a lesser crime.
In Wisconsin, imperfect self defense changes the first-degree intentional homicide that Rittenhouse is charged with to second-degree. So, it’s a partial excuse, or a mitigating factor.
The issue seems clear. Asking that question is irrelevant. The prosecution is hoping that he says “no” so that they can then ask the judge to use the video to impeach him. If he says “yes” then good for them because it makes Rittenhouse look bad. It’s a question that under the circumstances would upset any judge. It doesn’t matter if Rittenhouse thinks that jaywalkers should be shot by any passerby without trial. The question is did he act in compliance with the law, not the law as he thinks it should be, on the day at issue. These hypos are irrelevant to the case and the judge ruled correctly.
And no, as said before, if a mistrial is declared because of the prosecution’s actions, especially one this egregious, then a retrial is barred and it is a win for the defense.
I’m not sure how the jury will react to Kyle. The prosecutor got him pretty rattled. There were times he was practically bullying the kid.
Poor little bloodthirsty bastard kid.
How so?
The whole trial revolves around Rittenhouse’s state of mind when he shot three different people. The defense sought to call those people rioters, arsonists, and looters. How is a question about whether he thinks it appropriate to shoot people to protect property not relevant to what he might have been thinking when he shot those people?
Are you sure that’s a robber and not a zombie? 
Sorry, I’ll leave now. Carry on.
Black Knight (monty python): Come Back! I’ll bite your kneecaps off!