He’s a personality. Let’s see how the instructions look. I’ve been a juror where the judge essentially handed us the verdict with his rules. I don’t think Schroder will do that, but who knows!
I can understand that but what I don’t understand is how the judge can rule that you can’t call them victims because we’re in the middle of a trial that essentially decides whether or not they’re victims but at the same time allows them to be called rioters even though they were never charged with rioting, much less received a guilty verdict for it.
Calling them victims is prejudicial against Kyle, but calling them rioters is prejudicial against them.
What does that look like? I’ve never been on a jury.
The deceased aren’t on trial for one, so they don’t have the same procedural consideration as the defendant. The other element is Schroeder did not give the defense blanket privilege to call them rioters or looters, he said the defense could only do so if it offered up supporting evidence in context to use those terms. Like many have said–it’s fairly routine for a prosecutor to be allowed to call the deceased in a self-defense claim the “victim”, but it’s not something that’s crazy out of bounds either, just unusual. The judge’s discretion is significant in determining things like prejudice and etc, and his ruling in my opinion if it were reviewed by a superior court would not have been found to significantly alter the legal arguments that the prosecutor was being allowed to present. [Note it’s quite unusual for a prosecutor to appeal a judge’s decisions, but there are rare circumstances when it can occur, for minor things like word usage I’m not sure they’d have much ground. The prosecution can appeal rulings or other pretrial orders that it feels impairs its ability to prosecute, but the parameters of that vary a good bit state to state, and generally a lot of deference is given to the trial judge.]
The judge gave the instructions this morning before closing. There was a bit of back and forth with the lawyers, then the jury was called in. The judge got a bit confused, called a break, sent the jury out, then more discussion with the lawyers. Then he finished instructions and prosecutors started closing. Last I saw defence was giving closing.
IDK … that stunt with prompting the jury to applaud one of the defense witnesses for being a veteran (on Veterans’ Day) would have been smacked down by a judge if any defense attorney or prosecutor tried it. It’s even more prejudicial coming from the judge himself.
The job of the jury is to determine fact. The judge specifies what facts are to be determined. I served on a case where all of the jurors believed the guy did not do anything wrong and that’s how we wanted to vote. But, the judge instructed us to decide only whether or not he had violated a building code. He had, so that’s how we had to report it.
I’m not sure what sort of claim you could advance off of the clapping incident. A little weird? Yes. Legally improper? To the threshold it would result in a higher court “reversing” him? I dunno. Judges like this have rules they are supposed to follow and there’s a state agency that can investigate misconduct claims etc, I would be surprised if the clapping thing would even result in a misconduct charge (and such charges usually are simple chastisements, they don’t normally have the power to actually remove a judge from office typically or impose serious penalties.)
Note the actual sequence of events that went down–Schroeder announced to the court that because it was Veteran’s Day, anyone in the courtroom who had served in the armed forces should stand up to be recognized. No one did. He remarked that it is unusual to not even have one veteran in court. Then he said “well the next witness, Black, what branch did he serve in?” Black responded he had served in the Army, and then Schroeder said “I think we can give a round of applause to the people who have served our country”, and then the court did applaud. The defense witness was a use of force expert, and his military service was used by the defense to establish some of the basis for his expertise quite extensively in his ensuing testimony, so I don’t really see that the judge was telling the jury anything they wouldn’t already know, and while bizarre–asking for applause for Veterans on Veteran’s Day would be unlikely to constitute an egregious breach of conduct I can imagine.
So he tried the stunt once, and when it didn’t work, he doubled down using what he already knew (that the defense witness had served in the Army) to get the court to applaud. Sure, the jury would be told the witness’s Army credentials anyway, but that applause was the equivalent of telling the jury “this guy is really worth listening to.” It was cheap and sleazy, and while it might not legally be a breach of conduct you can’t tell me that an unbiased judge would let a defense attorney or prosecutor get away with it. From a judge it’s even worse.
We agree to disagree here. I think it boils down to good guy with a gun vs little man with a gun in his hand.
Some folks see KR as a good guy with a gun bringing calm to the curfew and some folks see his very presence with a long gun as a provocation. (I might start a great debate on this during Thanksgiving). Certainly, I see it as a provocation.
Don’t know how I would react if people in a crowd was shouting there’s the perp that just shot someone after personally hearing gunfire, and seeing the perp running with a gun. But in the heat of the moment, I’d be 99% sure it was an active shooter,
Well, goes to jury now. I can’t get over the stupidity of the whole incident. You bring a gun to a hostile situation, and you’re young and stupid, you’re probably gonna fire it.
I’m not even sure where I stand on this. I don’t think it’s first degree murder, but I sure wouldn’t call it self-defense.
You have obviously looked into his background more than I have. I agree that various things that came up point to him being right wing. But I have also heard he has a reputation of being extremely tough on the prosecution. Hence the ruling on the word victim which is his blanket rule and not just for this case. In general a right wing judge is thought to be friendly to the prosecution and not ride them harder. He was appointed by a democrat initially but that was in 1983 so that probably doesn’t mean much.
One thing clear to me is that regardless how the sentencing or lack thereof shakes out, KR may be found “not guilty” but is not “innocent.”
Is it true that Rittenhouse’s possession of the AR-15 did not violate applicable laws, and that the prosecution confirmed this?
This seems a very strange development, as over many months I’d heard many commentators state the opposite.
Maybe.
Seems Wisconsin law on what should be a pretty clear point are a mess, with different interpretations having been made. Minors are prohibited from possessing “dangerous weapons”, including all firearms. But a different section has an exception on long guns if they’re not “violating any hunting regulation”. It would seem the intent of the law is that a minor has to actually hunting but can’t be say poaching deer. But taking it literally would mean that a 16 or 17 year old could walk around Kenosha with one, since they’re not violating any hunting regulations by doing so.
I saw some of the Rittenhouse testimony on YT and I have to say, how come the case hasn’t been declared a mistrial yet? Since there were at least two major howlers in it by the prosecutions advocate. Bringing up silencer and attempting to adduce excluded evidence……wow.
My take on it is the case is such a hot mess for the prosecution that the Judge figures a conviction is unlikely. Or if there is one an appeals court will throw it out. He just doesn’t want to be the one to declare a mistrial with prejudice or a directed verdict because of the politically charged nature of the case, and the probability of having demonstrators / rioters outside his house if he does.
Well, actually, here he would be. It’s an affirmative defence. And it’s not a crime to kill someone in self defence.
Is anyone running the pool on how long the jury will be out with it?
I know this is going back a ways, but I just wanted to circle back to this point about McGinnis being a prosecution witness. He had to be called by the prosecution because one of the charges was that Rittenhouse recklessly endangered him. So the prosecution needed to call him. If your own necessary witness is also going to say damaging things, conventional wisdom is that you get it all out on direct exam, you don’t let the other side bring it out on cross. You aren’t bound somehow for everything your witness says.