If he had been unarmed, why would anyone have bothered him? It’s only because he recklessly brandished a weapon that others saw him as a threat. Of course, attempting to disarm a threat to life and limb is a capital crime in the US and any gun-toting douchebag is entitled to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
Well that explains the Zimmerman thing!
Are you under the impression that I’m fine with that? Not sure what gave you that impression. For the record, anyone out there with a gun was a huge piece of shit. Rittenhouse is just by far the biggest piece of shit because he was on the record fantasizing about killing people with his guns and because he actually murdered two people and tried to murder a third.
Let’s be fucking honest: Martin was black. That gave rise to a suspicion that Zimmermen decided merited further investigation.
By the way you keep going on about how Rittenhouse wasn’t an outsider, his dad lived in Kenosha! Well, did you forget that Martin was AT HIS DAD’S when Zimmerman stalked and killed him?
Does encouraging applause for a defense witness count as a “ruling”?
Yes. If one of them had killed Rittenhouse they should absolutely have been charged.
Ahem… “cite”, “site”, and “sight”. Choose wisely. 
Damn you Gaudere!
Incorrect. GG’s handgun was concealed and holstered up to the point that he believed an active shooter was on the loose. JZ is a different story. I missed his testimony but if I recall the videos correctly, he only fired after KR leveled his rifle at JR.
Seriously, can the posts about Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin stop. Those debates have been beaten to death and if anyone really wants to rehash them they should start another thread or zombie an old one. This is supposed to be about the Rittenhouse trial and it’s getting derailed by this bullshit.
It’s not a matter of me thinking you are fine with it. I’m trying to understand your logic. You don’t like that others had guns but only Rittenhouse was “escalating matters.” The first person who fired a round off was escalating matters quite a bit and that wasn’t Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse is a piece of shit and things would have been better if he stayed home. Granted. But if he escalated things just by bringing a gun then at least two others were escalating too. One of those fired a “warning shot” and the other pointed his gun at Rittenhouse. The problem is when you start contemplating that others may have escalated things you have to start wondering if Rittenhouse did act in self defense.
I was not aware of the criminal history of the two people Rittenhouse killed and the one he injured.
So now I’m thinking…you know how everyone says there is no justice in this universe? Legal matters aside and regardless of how this ends for Rittenhouse, I’m starting to think that in this case, maybe there is.
Which is why I mentioned the Zimmerman case way at the beginning of the thread, I was surprised when people attempted to make the thread about that case again much later, but they are very similar in many salient ways.
The core salient similarity is that in both cases a conservative white guy with a gun was engaging in lawful behaviors that “people don’t like”, particularly on the SDMB. Both were also frankly behaving unwisely, in my personal opinion.
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Zimmerman was performing duties as a volunteer neighborhood watchman while carrying a gun. The national organization that organizes neighborhood watches specifically says not to carry a gun–because the neighborhood watch is supposed to be eyes and ears, you call police and you do not engage. Zimmerman both carried a gun and confronted.
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Rittenhouse went specifically to a location where rioting / looting were highly likely, armed with a gun, ostensibly to “protect businesses” and to act as a “paramedic” (Gage Grosskreutz was also an “armed paramedic” FWIW.)
But something that many thousands of posts in the giant Zimmerman/Martin threads we had at the time, and now in this long thread that some people just emotionally cannot handle is that the core actions of both men are simply not criminal. Zimmerman should not have been carrying a gun while doing a neighborhood watch patrol. Likewise after calling in Martin as suspicious, he should have simply waited for police to handle it, he should not have confronted Martin. But neither action is criminal. Rittenhouse should have simply stayed home. But choosing to instead go to Kenosha wasn’t intrinsically criminal, nor was walking around the streets. In Rittenhouse’s case there are some aspects which could be criminal–for one, the breaking of curfew (although again, the judge threw that out and actually said police and local authorities had not made it properly clear as to whether a lawful curfew was in effect or not) and for two, the carrying of the firearm by someone under 17. That’s one aspect I haven’t delved into too much as to whether it was legal for Rittenhouse to possess the gun but not to transport it across state lines (which he says he did not do, as a friend provided it for him.) Anyway, that wrinkle isn’t of significant legal importance because a curfew violation and a misdemeanor gun charge don’t intersect much with the validity of self-defense claim.
Now there is an important element to which both cases are actually dissimilar. In Zimmerman/Martin’s case there was no clear witness to the verbal, then physical confrontation between the two men, and a number of incomplete/vague witnesses to the shooting (we had two people that saw Zimmerman/Martin right before the shooting, but not in detail, and a number of audio witnesses, several of whom offered up directly conflicting testimony.) The main evidence we had was Martin was on his cellphone at the time, and he could be heard asking someone “why are you following me?” or whatever and another person responding “what are you doing around here?” Then Martin says “Get off, get off”, which many people interpreted as evidence Zimmerman attacked him, but without more information we can’t really say that.
The crux for many people is Zimmerman was already doing things they disagreed with–doing neighborhood watch patrols armed, and confronting young black men for walking around. Repeatedly the question was raised “isn’t it possible Zimmerman is the one who started the physical scuffle, and only shot Martin when Martin got the upper hand?” The answer is “absolutely yes, it is possible”, but in a self-defense claim the essential legal rule is that once a defendant as established a self-defense claim with sufficient backing for a judge to issue self-defense instructions to a jury; the prosecution has to disprove the self-defense claim to the beyond reasonable doubt standard. Zimmerman absolutely could have started attacking Martin, lost, and then shot and killed Martin. That means he was a factual murderer. But the government still has to prove murders to the same burden of proof as any other crime, and it was simply not met in the Zimmerman case. It was obvious quite early in the case it was not met, it was obvious it was not met by the time the case ended, and unsurprisingly the jury acquitted him. The beyond reasonable doubt standard is intentionally a high one–and it means that in murders where the evidence is not clear and the witnesses are not clear, a murderer can walk free. That’s actually how the system is designed to work, the assumption being the power of the state to deprive someone of their liberty should only be exercised when it is very clear beyond any reasonable doubt the person was guilty.
Getting back to Rittenhouse’s case, we actually have significantly more evidence because we have aerial surveillance of the Rosenbaum / Rittenhouse encounter and camera phone surveillance of the two shootings. In the two famous camera phone videos, Rittenhouse is either prone and being attacked or is clearly being charged at. In the aerial video we see that Rittenhouse attempts to move away from Rosenbaum after their initial confrontation (in which Rosenbaum moves toward him from behind cars in a parking lot adjacent to the sidewalk Rittenhouse is on), we then see Rosenbaum pursue him.
We have testimony from one of the men Rittenhouse shot that he had a gun pointed at Rittenhouse’s head at the time he was shot by him, and we have other testimony that a man fired a warning shot while Rosenbaum pursued Rittenhouse. We have other witness testimony that Rittenhouse was attempting to move away from Rosenbaum et al. So we actually have significantly more evidence that helps establish Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim than we do Zimmerman’s.
So, Monday we hear final arguments and soon after a jury result.
A blushing, young Rittenhouse is the new icon of the gun fetish clan. Freed he’s triumphant, jailed he’s their martyr. What then?
Rittenhouse likely will be unemployable in normal society but will be able to make significant money from right wing people. Zimmerman was able to sell “paintings” and other nonsense and was clearing mid-six figures a year for several years after he killed Trayvon Martin. Rittenhouse will likely engage in similar levels of behavior and get money off of his name from an adoring far right.
Much like Zimmerman, he doesn’t have any real charisma or charm or much appealing about himself as a person, and over a few years he will fade from view into obscurity. If he is smart, he will invest the money he makes from his couple years of marketability in the right-wing world, if he is not smart, he’ll blow through it all.
I think KR should be held accountable for what he did, but these arguments about him not being “part of the community” are ridiculous and undermine the more important facts of the case. His dad lived in Kenosha (who I presume he stayed with and visited sometimes), he worked in Kenosha, he stayed with friends in Kenosha, and he was cleaning up graffiti in Kenosha that morning. Those are all facts. Saying he was an outsider looking for trouble is only half true (fyi, the last half). If the prosecution wants to emphasize the idea that KR was looking for trouble then they should focus on him leaving the property he was supposedly there to protect. The walking around asking if anyone needed a medic is just as transparent as his bawling on the stand. It was just an excuse to mingle with the crowd and feel invincible with his rifle.
What’s confusing? Under the law as written, if two people threaten each other with guns, whoever shoots and kills the other first is in the clear under “self defense” nonsense. I’m saying, if you put yourself purposefully into a situation where your only recourse is to kill someone in self defense, that’s “self defense” in the same way the Roman Empire conquered the world in self defense, per Tacitus.
I’d be perfectly fine with a legal system that throws both Rittenhouse and the guy with a pistol in jail.
If he manages to stay out of jail - which seems likely - he strikes me as someone who’ll buy a Dodge Hellcat at first rush of income and spend what’s left on more guns and para-military gear, while he continues to live in his parents basement.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week. The applause stunt of course is not a ruling, but it’s easy to imagine that the state could simply make a motion that the court instruct the jury “I fucked up, shouldn’t have done that, it was tremendously unprofessional and unfair, and you absolutely must completely disregard that I did it,” and/or recuse himself from the case because he has destroyed the perception of impartiality. And the judge’s guaranteed response of “fuck you” would certainly count as a ruling on that motion.
It seems unlikely to me that there’s a specific criminal procedure rule allowing an interlocutory appeal of a mid-trial denial of that kind of motion; the trial court is like a little fiefdom unto itself, and they’re not generally expected to have it out for the state.
But if there is no extraordinary relief that the appeals court would even consider, then you’re left accepting that a judge could say to the jury “yo don’t convict this guy,” or make fart noises and roll his eyes every time a state’s witness made a statement, and the state would be powerless because of double jeopardy.
It’s a bizarre situation. If you’re the prosecutor and you move for a mistrial and a recusal, you’re guaranteeing that judge is going to have it out for you forever, for however many more trials you’re bringing before him, and you are not at all able to be confident that you have any chance of succeeding. This is always, to some extent, the dilemma in trial court, because of the very high bar for what constitutes an abuse of a judge’s discretion. But it’s really weird to see it on TV directed at the state. At least when judges used to do this crap to me in civil trials, I could tell my client they had the option to take a (very low chance of success) appeal. There was at least some review.
Well, yeah. Is it really that hard to understand that people see conduct like that and think that a person who puts himself in that position shouldn’t have that privilege? I mean, people get mad because it seems like a situation where you shouldn’t be allowed to kill a human being. What’s so baffling about it?
Does it really have to be an all or nothing proposition? It seems to me that this might be the case with Rosenbaum. He was clearly there that night to cause trouble. I don’t think he was actually much of a threat to Rittenhouse but that’s up to the jury. But by all other accounts the skateboard guy and GG were reacting to what they thought to be a shooter trying to get away. You can argue whether they should have or not, but saying they got what they wanted is clearly wrong.