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Kyle Rittenhouse texts pledging to ‘murder’ shoplifters disillusion his ex-spokesperson
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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The analysis I read from a lawyer explained how Wisconsin's state laws on self defense are weirdly complex, and due to the exact order of events, under those laws, his intent technically didn't matter, and that's why it was inadmissible evidence. In most states it would be admissable, and he would be guilty. He even listed the laws out and while I don't recall any of the details now, it did seem perfectly logical to my layman's understanding. So it's not that the judge was biased, it's just that Rittenhouse, through dumb luck, happened to fall through a legal loophole. Wisconsin needs to fix it's laws, because it's abundantly clear he wanted to kill those people and morally speaking, I consider him to be an unrepentant murderer.
I don't see that to be clear at all. He fled from the first person who attacked him and didn't shoot him until they guy caught him and was trying to take his weapon after verbally threatening him. The other two men he shot both attacked him as well when he was fleeing the first incident. If I recall correctly one had struck him with a skateboard and the other pointed a handgun at him while he was down. Considering there were other people chasing after him he didn't shoot I'd consider him to have been fairly restrained. Usually people trying to fake a "I was just defending myself" defense put less effort into creating their pretext for shooting.
To me this entire situation was the people on both sides of it playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
This is how Wisconsin's law is so fucked up: The three men he shot were not working together, were not coordinated, did not know each other. So, on the one hand, Rittenhouse may have subjectively felt under coordinated attack, he was not, but the subjective feeling is what matters for the law.
From Huber:s POV, he was trying to disarm a murderer. Maybe he felt threatened, too? But the law is so fucked, his POV doesn't matter because he's dead. In Grosskreutz's POV, he was approaching an active shooter who'd just killed two men and trying to defuse the situation. When Rittenhouse pointed his gun, Grosskreutz would have been justified under the same law in blowing him away.
In short, the law incentivizes shooting first.
Is Wisconsin's law really any different? Most states the test for self defense is reasonable belief that your life is in danger from an imminent threat, but I'd doubt that claim from anyone who is pursuing someone else who is fleeing from them.
I'm not familiar with other states' laws. They could also be fucked up, too.