You’re right. By itself it doesn’t prove anything. While I doubt anyone but a Trump fan would have this as a ringtone it is possible he just likes that jam.
But, we have more evidence than only that. And, as in a court case, a preponderance of evidence can count. Even circumstantial evidence.
The little bit of the incident I saw in the news had the defense asking for a “mistrial with prejudice”, meaning the case can’t be retried and the defendant walks.
Yeah, the judge is the worst. If, by some chance, the jury returns a guilty verdict I fully expect him to reverse it from the bench.
Can this be appealed by the prosecution? I do not see double-jeopardy applying if this happened.
The rest of it is out there. E.g. Rittenhouse attorneys spar over victim depictions - ABC News
Prosecutors had hoped to highlight Huber’s actions as heroic in questioning his great-aunt, Susan Hughes, who also testified that Huber had known Jacob Blake. But Schroeder ruled that such testimony would open the door for the defense to tell jurors about Huber spending time in prison for a family dispute in 2012 in which he threatened his brother with a knife and choked him.
There’s more along those lines.
The context here is whether these guys rushed Rittenhouse because they genuinely made a reasonable determination that he was a danger to themselves or others, or whether they just wanted to attack him. If they had histories as peaceful and mentally stable people, that would push the likelihood in one direction. If they had histories as violent and/or mentally ill people, that pushes the odds in a different direction.
The original context was not whether they deserved to be shot or whether this implied that Rittenhouse was guilty or innocent. Rather, it was about CoolHandCox remarking that the legal status of the killing of 29 subsequent people could all hinge on the status of the original killing. My response was that generally people wouldn’t and shouldn’t attack other people when circumstances are unclear, but that in this case it seems that this is what these people did.
I had to step away and I think your question may have subsequently been answered–but you posited two scenarios (at least as I read it), one in which Rittenhouse maybe did not intend to commit murder and was acting in self-defense and 29 “Good Samaritans” then attempt to use lethal force to subdue him–since he had not behaved criminally to begin with, they have no right to use lethal force against him, and he has every right to defend himself. But each individual shooting would have to be evaluated on its own merits, the particulars of each circumstance would have to show he genuinely feared for life/limb, and that his response was reasonable to the situation. He can’t for example just star mowing down a crowd a people because a few members of the crowd might have bad designs on him, while the others are just rubes milling about.
In this particular scenario, if the “Good Samaritan” had gotten the upper hand and killed Rittenhouse, they likely would also be acquitted even though he had not committed a crime and they had no reason to kill him–because the totality of the circumstances is such that they would likely be able to successfully argue they thought he was a dangerous murderer on the street shooting people. There was a police officer just this week who was not charged on a similar case–dangerous person trying to kill people, a Good Samaritan kills him. Police show up, see Good Samaritan standing there over a dead man, gun in hand, police shoot and kill the Good Samaritan. The prosecutor said that the officer had an “objectively reasonable belief” that the man (his name was John Hurley) was a threat. It’s a tragic accident and mistaken action, but not a criminal one.
The second scenario you posited was the Rittenhouse’s initial shooting was genuinely and unequivocally intentional murder. In that circumstance Rittenhouse has a dramatically reduced right to self-defense–it’s probably simpler to just say he doesn’t really have a right to self-defense anymore. There are some VERY edge cases where he would still be allowed to defend himself, but he even still might face some charges for the self-defense acts.
There’s reporting out of the area by local attorneys who say that is standard operating procedure in this judge’s case. This particular judge is not very friendly to prosecutions, and holds them to perhaps a rougher standard that is the norm (most judges, particularly elected judges, are in close with the local prosecutor’s departments and police departments, and have a sort of institutional anti-defendant bias, even though they generally do try to keep things appropriately neutral under the law, this judge doesn’t)–one local attorney specifically said if you’re a defense attorney this is the judge you want. So there’s not much going on here that is out of the norm for this judge.
Oy… 
Full Title: Kyle Rittenhouse defense claims Apple’s ‘AI’ manipulates footage when using pinch-to-zoom
From that article:
The defense attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse has claimed that Apple uses “artificial intelligence” to manipulate footage when users pinch-to-zoom on iPads. The judge in the trial said it was up to the prosecution to prove this is untrue.
Thing is…Apple (and many others) absolutely do use AI to manipulate photos but not in a way that changes the content of the photo. They change contrast and things like that. Take 10 pics of the same thing with 10 different phones and you will see 10 different pictures but they will all be identifiable as a photo of the same thing at the same time.
Not sure how the “pinch-to-zoom” thing figures in to this.
I’ve watched/listened to much of the trial and I’m surprised the prosecution hasn’t emphasized something that I think shows Rittenhouse was not under threat of death or great bodily harm when he killed Rosenbaum (though I might have missed it because I haven’t watched every minute).
It seems they’ve only touched briefly on the fact that Rittenhouse’s gun was secured across his body with a sling. His defense relies heavily on his “fear” that Rosenbaum was going to snatch his gun away and use it against him. Yet, at the time that KR shoots JR, KR has full control of the weapon, it’s strapped securely to him, and the only contact JR has with the gun is a lunging grasp at the barrel that KR dodges. At the very least, had KR not rushed to pull the trigger, JR would have needed to recover from his missed lunge in which time KR could have continued to run away. I expected the prosecutors to exercise some sort of visual demonstration to show how difficult it would be to wrestle the gun away from someone who has it strapped around them.
Also, at no time does KR issue any sort of verbal command or warning to JR he is willing to use deadly force. I’m not saying this is in any way required in a valid self-defense claim, but I think it points to KR’s inexperience and cavalier attitude regarding the responsibility that comes with carrying a firearm and how he would engage with the protesters that night. KR was a little boy, wanna-be cop, who thought that carrying a big gun made him invincible that night. But once he became separated from his protector he realized that he was so over his head the fear was overwhelming. Fear is relative but there should be a high bar if it’s going to be used to justify killing someone. Thrusting yourself into a situation where confrontations are likely and then saying you were so afraid you had to shoot someone the first time someone comes at you (with no weapon) should not rise to that level.
Wait wait wait…I thought they were anarchists? For the first 350 posts they were anarchists. Were they anarcho-communists? You’ve just blasted right by Dirty Socialists and gone right for the mother of all failed socio-political philosophies.
I bet they’re cat lovers too!
Are the prosecutors intentionally throwing this case?
Just checking to see if I understand.
Al (good guy with gun) sees Bob shoot three people. From his reasonable perspective it looks like Bob is a bad guy on a shooting rampage. He draws his gun to take care of the situation.
But in reality, Bob is also a good guy with a gun. The three people were attacking him and he was defending himself. When he sees Al with the gun he interprets this as a fourth attacker and is afraid for his life.
So, Al could kill Bob to defend the life of other people. Bob could kill Al in self defense because it was reasonable to believe his life was in danger. Or they may get into a shooting match. And the law is okay with either of them killing the other?
As I understood it, the issue is as follows:
It’s common, when taking pictures which are not of very high resolution, that blowing them up doesn’t help in terms of viewing details. What happens is that you get a big picture but of large blocs of magnified pixel, and the picture becomes less viewable, not more.
What’s being suggested is that pinch-to-zoom gets around that by using AI. So there’s an algorithm which looks at the blocks of color and makes an educated guess as to how it would look if it was taken at higher resolution, and then reproduces that recreated high resolution and allows the viewer to see more detail.
So the defense objected that this could make a difference in viewing close-ups of the Rittenhouse altercations. Exactly what position was the gun? The Rosenbaum/Huber/Grosskreutz arms? How far apart were they? Are you seeing an actual photo of these details, or an AI guess about them?
It’s my understanding that judges typically don’t allow evidence to be introduced unless there’s a high degree of confidence that it’s solidly grounded. This seems to be along those lines.
It’s possible that the above is all wrong, but ISTM that it’s reasonable on its face to deny the technology until it’s shown to be wrong.
We’ve all seen photos expanded and they lose detail/definition. The computer tries to look at pixels nearby and then fill in new pixels based on that. Which is why those photos get fuzzy/blurry.
But it does not put a gun in someone’s hands who did not have one. It does not put people’s arms up or down in surrender. It does not change which way people were facing. And so on…
It is a piece of evidence which, by itself, may not tell the whole story but if you have other evidence this could certainly help corroborate it.
The thing is you’re already creating a much higher bar for self-defense than actually exists. Someone chasing you with violent intent is, in and of itself, often more than enough to establish a self-defense claim–even in a duty to flee state, if you can convince the jury that you weren’t able to flee successfully. In this case we have so much more than that, including Ziminski firing a warning shot near the area where Rittenhouse / Rosenbaum were. A core issue a lot of people seem to be struggling with is that, under the law, whatever went on between Rosenbaum and Rittenhouse to precipitate Rosenbaum chasing him, Rosenbaum has absolutely no right to chase someone down a public street. That in and of itself serves as a significant foundation for the self-defense claim.
There are, of course, more elements to it, for example evidence about why Rosenbaum was pursuing, what he may or may not have been saying, whether he had compatriots with him and what they were saying or doing etc. But the frank reality is Rosenbaum would be alive today if he didn’t attempt to run down a guy with a gun strapped to his body.
These are frankly getting tedious.
Core issue in American self defense: Were you the aggressor? No? Okay, were you committing some sort of felon otherwise? No, okay then-- At the time you killed the person, did you have a reasonable fear of life and limb? You can invent a trillion different scenarios and that will be the same answer a trillion different times. Trying to create increasingly arcane and weird scenarios and asking “what about now” is kind of pointless. The answer is always the same. The more ridiculous the scenario both the less likely it would occur in real life (and thus the less relevant it is) and the more likely it might contain some element in it that a jury would not find reasonable.
In non-Stand Your Ground states there is an additional limited duty to attempt to retreat, although the degree to which that practically reduces your ability to assert self-defense is actually not that much–much of the hullabaloo over passing Stand Your Ground laws was a cultural distaste over duty to retreat, but the reality is that historically most of the time if you weren’t the aggressor and someone was coming at you with menace–many prosecutors would not even charge you, and fewer juries would convict you. Duty to retreat typically only quashed self-defense claims in real egregious cases where frankly the person defending themselves very easily could have avoided the situation and instead just chose to kill.
People keep leaving out bits of self defense.
To use force in self defense or defense of others, you have to believe someone is using, or imminently going to use unlawful force against you. If you use deadly force, the threat had to be of death or grievous bodily injury. Your belief must also be reasonable.
If you just shot 3 people, and someone points a gun at you and says “drop your weapon. I’m calling the police.” You likely know that’s lawful. And it would not be reasonable to think it’s unlawful.
[quote=“SpacemanSpiff_II, post:393, topic:953798, full:true”]
As I understood it, the issue is as follows:
It’s common, when taking pictures which are not of very high resolution, that blowing them up doesn’t help in terms of viewing details. What happens is that you get a big picture but of large blocs of magnified pixel, and the picture becomes less viewable, not more.[/quote]
Not necessarily.
If the original image was of very high resolution, and is subsequently displayed on a low-resolution device or screen, something has to give. A typical solution to “too many pixels” is to drop every second or third or N pixels, which may be followed by smoothing – adding interpolated pixels. If you zoom out, assuming the software handles the zoom-out the best way, you can add in the pixels originally dropped. This can certainly add information that was lost in the original, reduced image. Theoretically, you might now be able to see something (like a gun or part of one) that was covered up in the first image.
If an image is enlarged digitally past the point of “no more pixels available”, then either interpolation or magnification of individual pixels would have to be used. Neither of these add back lost information. Interpolation attempts to guess what the “missing” pixels might have been; magnification just makes tiny dots into large dots.
But, in a dangerous place, you had just shot three people in self defense. You are scared, under the influence of adrenaline, and someone has a gun, would it be reasonable to shoot before they get out “drop your weapon”? Is it the fault of the person that got shot because he didn’t say “drop your weapon”?
I’m just saying there’s more to it. It’s not just some unending chain of person who shoots in self-defense can then be shot by someone who can then be shot by someone else, etc. There are more things the person is required to have a belief of, and that belief must be reasonable.
What has been found to be “reasonable” isn’t always reasonable IMO.