The jury wasn’t allowed to see Rittenhouse being recorded as saying that he wished he had his AR with him so that he could start firing on people coming out of a CVS pharmacy.
I’m conflicted about the verdict. I could see lesser charges on some his actions. But the bottom line is that there was a lot of bad luck, and a shit-ton of bad decisions all around.
It sucks that people got killed. It sucks that he killed them, justified or not.
In most states, “mere words” are not justification for a battery. So in this hypothetical, calling someone a motherfucker might be rude or impertinent, but the other person would be the initial aggressor by charging at you.
As far as Rittenhouse and this thread, it seems like we cannot separate two different arguments: I agree that many people don’t believe that citizens should be allowed to carry AR-15s in public, or even own them at home. I get the debate and we’ve had those, but they belong in the various gun control threads.
But given that carrying such a gun is legal we analyze this under the law of self-defense, and the evidence I have seen seems an obvious case of self defense, in which Rittenhouse should have never been charged and IMHO the prosecution crossed many ethical boundaries in trying to convict him.
I agree that the right to self-defense is pretty fundamental and well enshrined in law, generally with the appropriate limitations (proportionate force appropriate to the circumstances, etc.). But this sidetrack started with your claim that it’s a constitutional right. It’s nowhere in the Constitution (though of course neither are a lot of other things that are well-established laws). Indeed Scalia’s contorted attempt to somehow try to find it in the Second Amendment is precisely why the Heller ruling was so flawed, “a strained and unpersuasive reading” which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had “bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law”, to use Stevens’ exact words.
It appears that the real issue in the Rittenhouse case was the extent to which self-defense was really applicable. I haven’t been following the case so I have no views on that, although the way the politics has lined up on it makes me dubious about the way it turned out. I’ve been following the McMichael and Bryan trial much more closely and I hope those bastards fry in hell. If they get off, too, then that sets yet more precedent favouring a nation of gun-toting vigilantes.
Madison Cawthorn joins the stampede of MAGAt Reps clamoring to hire KR as an intern. (It’s now Gaetz, Gosar, and Cawthorn.)
He also advises his followers: “Be armed. Be dangerous.”
Leaving the gun control issue for another thread, is it your contention that if a state passed a law abolishing the affirmative defense of self defense, say that if a kidnapper/murderer/rapist showed up at your home, and the new law required you to refrain from using force to repel the kidnapping/your own murder/you or your spouse’s rape—that such a law would be consistent with the United States Constitution?
I think certainly not. Call it substantive due process, a privilege or immunity, the Ninth Amendment. It is so basic in the history and traditions of the country and essential to ordered liberty that it is almost certainly a fundamental, constitutional right, regardless of the Second Amendment’s construction.
I only mentioned it is a constitutional right because a (misinformed) person had repeatedly said it wasn’t. It’s fairly well understood that the specific, enumerated rights in the constitution are not the only constitutional rights. Our constitution is actually clear on that, and our Supreme Court has been clear as well that many rights we enjoyed as established rights going back to the common law or even some natural rights, are protected by our constitution. To be quite honest I think even some of the most liberal jurists we have had would not seriously argue that we as Americans lack a basic constitutional right to self-defense, as it is seen as a normal right we all have. Where many historical liberal jurists would differ from more conservative justices (although these ideological groupings don’t always predict court rulings perfectly) is specific ways in which people can assert this right and what limits states can put on said right.
Agreed. And further neither side believes that because we have a right to self defense such that we can possess any implement of self defense that we wish in order to defend ourselves. The Scalia v. Stevens debate would put personally owned firearms on different sides of that line.
But it still doesn’t answer the question of whether a particular act was self defense. Heller says (in dicta) that states may ban M-16 firearms, but if I owned one illegally and used it in purported self defense, the illegality of my possession would not (in almost all circumstances) have any bearing on the question of whether I used it in self defense. I could be prosecuted for owning the M-16, but the self defense question would remain separate, which is my main problem with the debate in this thread.
I’m not a lawyer and certainly not a constitutional scholar, but my best guess in response to the first question is that the Supreme Court would overturn it on the same basis that it would overturn any asinine, extreme, or discriminatory law, probably on the basis of the 14th Amendment, notably the part that says “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. These kinds of open-ended assertions of rights have allowed the Supreme Court to weigh in on all manner of questions in sometimes unexpected ways; indeed it was the 14th Amendment that they interpreted to empower them to give the election to Bush in 2000, coincidentally by a vote of the conservative majority.
But this is not the same as any kind of explicit endorsement of self-defense. The Ninth Amendment doesn’t really say anything; it’s equivalent to the legal jargon “including but not limited to” which allows lawyers to claim, after the fact, that a contract implies all kinds of things that are not actually in it. Similar stuff is found in the Eighth Amendment regarding “excessive” bail or fines, or “cruel and unusual punishment”. It means basically whatever the justices in any particular instance want it to mean.
If he actually killed someone in the past it probably would not have been allowed to be told to the jury. I don’t know if people understand what lengths the court goes to keep prior words or actions of the defendant from the jury.
I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. My point was that @Martin_Hyde had said that there was no indication that Kyle had been looking for someone to shoot (paraphrasing). Maybe Kyle wasn’t that night, but he at least mentioned it a few weeks before.
I completely understand why the jury wasn’t allowed to hear that. I’m not saying that it had an affect on the trial. Just that his having thoughts like that weren’t unheard of.
Like I said, though, it’s just a shitty situation for everyone involved.
I’ve actually already addressed that. If everyone I’ve ever heard talk about shooting ne’er-do-wells did so, I’d know many murderers. Lots of people talk that way without meaning anything. It’s not really proof of anything, I don’t consider it proof of Rittenhouse’s motivations, and a court would not even consider it appropriate matter for discussion at trial.
One more thing about this business of self-defense and the Constitution. Again, no argument from me that the right to self-defense is well established in law, but claiming that it’s in the Constitution in some implicit way seems to me to be quite a stretch.
I previously referenced the 8th, 9th, and 14th Amendments. These are all mostly vague and intentionally non-specific. They don’t really say much, but instead give the Supreme Court a vehicle for interpreting a wide variety of circumstances in whatever way they choose.
Yet there are other amendments in the Bill of Rights that are rather strangely specific. Every modern democracy on earth has provisions for allowing citizens to own firearms, yet very few have felt the need to enumerate that right in a constitution, yet there it is in the US Constitution, much to the dismay of many. The Third Amendment about quartering soldiers in private homes is not just quaint by modern standards, but almost comical in its specificity. There are other very specific ones, like the abolition of slavery, prohibiting denial of the right to vote based on race, but they’re more modern additions.
Yet the right to self-defense is enumerated nowhere. If the founders felt it was sufficiently fundamental and important, it easily could have been; in fact, given the ill-advised inclusion of the Second Amendment, that would have been the perfect place to put it. But it’s not there, except in the fevered imagination of Antonin Scalia. Is it perhaps precisely because it’s such a well established historical matter of law that the founders felt it was unnecessary to include it? No, because there is a whole set of amendments dealing with the justice system and the rights of the accused, like due process, warrants, the right to counsel, and many others, all of which are well established matters of law.
If amendments like the 9th or the 14th are going to be interpreted so liberally that they can be presumed to imply all kinds of unspecified rights like self-defense, or if Scalia is going to re-interpret the 2nd to imply a right to self-defense with a firearm, then those open-ended ones like the 9th or 14th can even more plausibly be interpreted to imply that every citizen, having a right to life and property, should bloody well have a fundamental right to health care (this is in fact set out in Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights). When is that going to happen? Instead, we have increasing precedent reinforced by cases like the Rittenhouse verdict, supported by bad laws, that give you the right to shoot people. But if you’re the victim of a shooting, or the victim of a serious and costly illness, well, pal, sucks to be you.
A false equivalence in the context of a thread about a kid with a gun murdering people while role playing in a riot
Al apologies for what might be a thread hijack, but to nitpick that: he wasn’t, as it happens, murdering people; he was, in fact, acting in self-defense.
Here’s a version of exactly that. A police officer fired three shots at a teenager armed with a knife, which ultimately killed him. Then he fired six more. The initial shots were deemed sufficiently justified that he was acquitted of the murder charge. But he was found guilty of attempted murder for the next six, which were deemed not justified. That second volley cost him his career, his freedom, and pretty much ruined his life.
Well, that’s the right-wing take on it, anyway. I believe three Republican senators have already offered him internships, and rumour is that he’ll be invited to speak at the RNC convention. Meanwhile, before the verdict was announced, a far-right group threatened a man they believed to be a jury member with death if they didn’t acquit Rittenhouse.
The interesting question is, why is someone who was allegedly just defending himself such an incredible hero to the political right? People are forced to defend themselves all the time without being celebrated as national heroes. Could it be that certain political persuasions just like vigilantism when directed against those they hate?
ETA: I am neutral on the technicalities of the legal rationale for the acquittal. But the worship of this dude from the far right is deeply disturbing. As is the comfort that this verdict gives to future would-be murderous vigilantes.
But flip that around: to the extent that “just defending himself” should be pretty unremarkable — that there’s nothing wrong with it, though it’s not necessarily something to be held up as heroic — then why are various folks on the left siding against this guy so vociferously?
I find that to be deeply disturbing; and, in a world where folks on the left are going to rail against someone for — as you put it — “just defending himself”, well, then suddenly there’s a case to be made that, hey, this guy’s example is a wake-up call: a disturbingly large number of people don’t seem to be clear on the fact that Just Defending Yourself is Seal Of Approval stuff, and so how about we emphatically clarify that for them?
I’d say that would be grounds for an appeal as it directly impeaches Rittenhouse’s testimony. I know the judge said it was inadmissable but I think R’s own testimony changed that.
“Vociferously”? Maybe some are. But how many on the left were so invested that they tried to threaten and intimidate the jury before the verdict was reached? Most are just disappointed because they see this guy as a vigilante who went around with a gun looking for trouble, and found it. To the extent that the verdict may have been technically correct, the disappointment is at least in part because Wisconsin’s gun laws made the prosecution’s case an uphill battle, and so in the large scheme of things they believe that morally justice was not done, even if the verdict was legally correct. In most civilized countries this guy would have been charged with multiple firearms violations as aggravating factors to murder, and likely convicted of all of them. Still, those who look to the President for leadership will have heard Biden say that the jury system works, and he stands by the “not guilty” verdict.
With that said, now why don’t you answer my question instead of trying to deflect it. Why is this guy such an incredible hero with the political right, even among some right-wing US Senators, instead of just a kid who was charged with killing two people and attempting to kill a third, and then acquitted? What, exactly, makes him a “hero” worthy of the kind of celebrity Republicans are giving him?
I stand by what I said: that defending oneself should be unremarkable; but that, since we’re apparently in some kind of topsy-turvy world where entirely too many people seem to disagree by wishing real hard that this particular guy would’ve been convicted of crimes rather than walking free, his actions in this situation should be presented as a shining example of acceptable self-defense.