Because the affirmative defense they are trying to refute is that he acted in self defense. Did the prosecution up to this point put forth any evidence that he killed them to protect property? Was anyone involved destroying property when they were shot? His personal philosophy about various laws is not relevant and it is prejudicial to the defense. This is not something just for this particular trial. I have seen many trials where the prosecutor has to bend themselves into a pretzel in order to keep out anything prejudicial to the defendant.Things that an outsider would think are absolutely relevant. Things that as a juror you would want to know. But many decades of case law say you can’t. This was absolutely a way for the prosecutor to try back door that tape into the trial and the judge rightfully called him on it.
Rosenbaum was a convicted sex offender who raped several young boys in his household. He also had an open domestic violence case at the time of his death.
Huber had a long history of domestic violence.
Grosskreutz just has a misdemeanor conviction for possessing a gun while intoxicated. Since it was a misdemeanor it does not prevent him from owning or possessing a gun now.
This was pretty widely reported in the weeks after the incident. None of the victim’s criminal histories were brought up during the trial.
Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? They all deserved to die, then. Case closed.
Or is your argument that we don’t need to care about bad people?
Or that because they were bad people, we should assume they were capable of anything, and therefore we must give anyone who kills them the benefit of the doubt?
I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t ask the clarifying question. I only answered the question with facts. Please explain where you got all the rest of that. It wasn’t in my head. Was it in yours?
Well, you see, when there’s a deadly police shooting, the same dredging up of past misdeeds comes up as well, to the extent that the phrase “he was no angel” is specifically associated with it. The intent is generally to lessen the burden on the cop/shooter by insinuating (carefully, so as to maintain plausible deniability) that the victims “had it coming” or that because of their past actions, they must have done something wrong to invite their death. The logic is that without that intent to shift blame away from the cop/shooter in the current situation (whether it ends up being justified or not), there’s no reason to bring up the bad things the victim did in the past at all.
Or something like that. Look up police misconduct discussions, and you’ll see a lot of it.
No one is saying they deserved to die. You can legitimately kill someone in self defense without thinking they ‘deserve’ to die. Just that you believed that they were going to kill you or inflict severe bodily harm if you didn’t defend yourself.
If some guy whose kid just died loses control and decides to beat on the person who says something horrible to him and that person defends themselves and kills him, that doesn’t mean he ‘deserved’ to die. We can all understand how a good person could lose control like that. But it does mean that if you take actions that cause someone else to reasonably assume you are trying to kill or main them, they can defend themselves up to the point of killing you, even if everyone agrees that normally the aggressor is a great guy.
The whole thing is a tragedy.
More like, we don’t need to give people a free shot at killing us. Someone triss to kill you, you can try to kill them right back. The only question you’ll face is whether you had no alternative, not whether you thought the other guy was good or bad, or what color his skin was, or anything else. If you reasonably believe your life is in danger, you can defend yourself up to and including lethal force. No normative judgements about the other people are needed.
I’m thinking that if you hear gunshots while running away and you turn around and a guy is pointing a Glock 17 at you from three feet away, the ‘benefit of the doubt’ ship has pretty much sailed.
Look up projecting. Someone asked for a clarification of a fact. Factual information was given. The initial statement that led to the question was loaded with prejudicial phrases. Take it up with that poster if you have a problem with them. Or with reality if you have a problem with facts.
This stuff isn’t rocket science. If you don’t want a victim to defend himself than don’t attack the victim. This is a trivially easy concept to understand in any society where the natural right to defend oneself is recognized.
The anger at Rittenhouse and why he’s being tried is political/ideological. There is value in the optics of anarchism to enact radical change. The attack on Rittenhouse and his acts of self defense change the calculations moving forward and that’s unacceptable.