By now everyone has, I’m sure, done a bunch of venting about the outcome of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial today. Whether that’s about the judge and his behavior, the prosecution, the defense, the actual events, or some combination of all of them. The reality though, and I’m sure someone put this in a comment in MisterMix’s post, is that the odds were always in favor of an acquittal. I’ll leave the discussion of whether the local prosecutors in Kenosha overcharged or incorrectly charged Rittenhouse to the our crack team of readers and commenters who are lawyers, especially those who practice in Wisconsin (hint, hint). As for whether the judge’s behavior and rulings were way out of bounds, I’m sure those readers and commenters who are lawyers will be happy to explain that judges, especially those handling criminal cases, are often unique individuals. I’m sure those that do defense work will also explain that the instructions about using terms like victim or perpetrator are actually what every defendant should be getting from judges, but, sadly, all too few ever do. Especially if the accused are people of color.
This is a good thread from a public defender in Louisiana about the judge’s instruction on the language the prosecutors and the defense counsel could and could not use during the trial and how almost all the initial reporting and subsequent commentary got it wrong. Here’s his take on the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial. Here’s Ken White’s, aka Popehat, explainer on Judge Schroeder, his behavior, and why it is all too common.
I want to just briefly focus on why today’s acquittal was always the likely outcome: because the laws on armed self defense and/or stand your ground laws are either sloppily written or are currently interpreted in a very broad manner. I’m most familiar with Florida’s stand your ground expansion of its self defense laws because I was teaching state and local politics* at UF when it was being debated. The bill, commonly referred to as the Baxley Amendment as it was submitted by a state legislator from the greater Orlando area named Dennis Baxley. Baxley didn’t write the bill, it was written by Marion Hammer, who was the then chief lobbyist for both the NRA in Florida and Associated Industries of Florida (the largest business lobby in the state). Hammer is commonly referred to as the Gun Granny. The bill has what is now the usual legislative language about a reasonable person feeling threatened as the determinant for whether standing one’s ground is justified, as well as no duty to retreat. However, it also frames this within the perception regarding whether the person who is claiming stand your ground as a defense is actually facing an imminent threat. When you combine the latter with the no duty to retreat portion of the law, it allows someone to instigate and/or escalate a confrontation, determine they’re being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore use lethal force to stop that perceived threat.
While my understanding of the Rittenhouse case from the reporting and the commentary is that there was no stand your ground law in place in Wisconsin for Rittenhouse’s defense team to invoke, the description of instigating and/or escalating a confrontation determining one is being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore employing lethal force to stop that perceived threat is a pretty good description of Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions on the night he decided to go play shooting medic in Kenosha.
That description, part of which – that Rittenhouse was under attack by three different people as the lead elements of a mob of protestors, demonstrators, and rioters – focused on the imminent threat Rittenhouse was in and his inability to safely retreat, which required him to use lethal force in self defense is what his defense was built around. It was the focus of his direct testimony and it was the focus of his attorneys’ theory of the case. And it was a powerful defense because with the exception of Gage Grosskruetz, the people he shot were not alive to tell their version of events. And this is what I want to focus on.
The simple reality is that in these armed self defense and/or stand your ground cases, the person who survives and is able to tell their version of events usually has an advantage. For the simple reason that the person or people that they shot and killed are dead and can’t really speak for themselves. The Tampa Bay Times did an extensive investigation into Florida’s stand your ground law and had two major takeaways. The first is that if only one party survived, specifically the party invoking stand your ground, then he or she (though it is usually a he) had a very high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal because the other party or parties to the shooting were dead. The second was that if the person who was claiming stand your ground was white, the person they shot and killed is a person of color, and/or both they have an exceedingly high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal. Whether Baxley, or really Marion Hammer, intended Florida’s stand your ground law, which became the model for similar legislation with minor variations in many other states, to actually have a racist effect is both not known and immaterial. Like so many other of our criminal laws, the reality is it produces a serious and significant racial disparity when applied.
This brings us back to Kyle Rittenhouse. The only way today’s outcome would have been different was if Gage Grosskruetz had shot Rittenhouse rather than moving his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target to signal he wasn’t a threat. Rittenhouse ignored that, which makes the acquittal on the charges regarding Grosskruetz’s being shot so egregious, and then claimed self defense because Grosskruetz was actively targeting Rittenhouse, which created an imminent threat of serious bodily harm and/or death.
Grosskruetz’s cardinal mistake was in deciding Rittenhouse was not a threat and, as a result, taking his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target and not shooting. I know that sounds cold and callous. And before someone eventually reads this and thinks I’m calling for Rittenhouse to be shot, I AM NOT CALLING FOR RITTENHOUSE TO BE SHOT!!!! The reality is if you draw your gun for self defense purposes, especially if you have a handgun and the person who is doing the shooting has a rifle, you had better take the shot. Unless you are under secure and impenetrable cover so that no matter what the other person does, you can’t be shot. Because if you don’t, the person who has been doing the shooting will see you, see your gun, and shoot you because you are a threat to him (it is almost always a him).
As I wrote way back when the congressional Republicans’ softball practice was attacked, the first attempted claim of stand your ground was in Philadelphia in the 1790s. The judge determined it was not a valid defense under the US constitution, Pennsylvania’s constitution, or the common law. The local newspaper actually published the write up of the trial as a special pamphlet, which is attached below this post. It is important to remember that the people (okay, white men) who had just come through the Revolution, the founding of the US, and were alive for the debates around both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution did not accept stand your ground as a legitimate defense. That it has been revived over the past twenty years with claims of originalism rooted in the largely created from whole cloth revisionism of the 2nd Amendment’s legislative, constitutional, and legal history is just stupendously amazing.
Open thread!
Duane 1799 – Report of extraordinary transactions at Philadelphia (1)
* When I first got to UF, because I already had a pair of masters degrees and experiencing teaching as an adjunct and as a teaching assistant, I got assigned to septuagenarian member of the faculty who had had a mild stroke from which he’d made an almost complete recovery. The guy rode his bike about 40 miles to and from campus each day! His specialty was state and local politics and, to be frank, he should have retired many years before I got there as time, the discipline, and reality had long passed him by. He was a wonderful person, really cared about the students, and loved teaching. Unfortunately they’d assigned him a 300 student intro to state and local government section. He’d never taught any course with more than 20 or 30 students, including the intro course. My job was to help him deal with this new reality. To this day I’m convinced the department chair at the time assigned him this section in the attempt to either force him to retire or kill him from the stress. Regardless, because I basically ran the course for him – I did the syllabus, handled drafting the tests and quizzes and getting them graded, did all the administration, ran the review sections, etc – we both got through the semester without major incident and as a result it was determined that I was now qualified to teach state and local politics. So every few semesters, I’d get assigned to teach it despite it being well outside of my specialty areas.
Lt. Condition
The reality of the acquittal is the predictable result of intentionally broadly permissive laws to allow the right people to kill whoever they want as long as there’s the thinnest veneer of an excuse.
They want to be able to use violence when the urge moves them, and that’s why these laws exist. It’s not a drafting error.
debbie
If Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers get off, then we will truly be doomed.
Skepticat
Wouldn’t one think that stand-your-ground laws ought to take into account whether it’s YOUR ground? Vigilante tourism is the new RWNJ activity.
Skepticat
How depressing is it that I believe that “If” will very shortly become “When”?
Chetan Murthy
Adam, I read your post, and while, sure, it makes sense, I am reminded that when a Black gun rights activist showed up in downtown Dallas openly carrying his AR-15 (IIRC — it was a long gun), and then an active shooter situation developed
You’re surely right about the laws and all. But the fact that this little piece of shit wasn’t shot on sight by the po-po to start with, is also part of this injustice. Because any Black man doing what he did (long before the first shot was fired would have been.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: I’ll say this more succinctly: sure sure, these laws are written in a way such that a shooter in Rittenhouse’s shoes can get off. But only a white shooter in Rittenhouse’s shoes even survives to get to a courtroom. Only a white shooter.
ETA: Or more precisely, only a White Supremacist shooter. Cf. Reinoehl in Portland.
Matt McIrvin
These don’t sound like sloppily drafted laws, they sound like very precisely maliciously drafted laws intended to get this outcome.
Adam L Silverman
@Skepticat: The ground, according to these laws, is anywhere one is legally allowed to be.
Adam L Silverman
@Chetan Murthy: That was why I wrote (emphasis mine):
New Deal democrat
Exactly. Simply put, same fact situation, two armed people approach one another. Both feel threatened.
Duty to retreat (old law)—> both must retreat in a public space. Typical result: de-escalation, no shooting, no deaths.
Stand your ground (new law) —> both have the right to shoot one another. Typical result: escalation, shooting, injuries or deaths.
There is a good reason the duty to retreat was the law for hundreds of years.
Omnes Omnibus
Let me start by saying that I think Rittenhouse is a piece of shit and that he went to Kenosha hoping to do what he did. So everyone, please, remember that when reading the rest of my comment.
The judge was an ass, but shitloads of judges are. The prosecution did not do a great job, and that is common because things are usually so stacked in their favor that they don’t need to. I pretty much agree with everything that Popehat and the Louisiana defense dude said above.
WI self-defense law requires that, once a defendant makes self-defense an issue, the prosecution prove that it was not self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. It can be a tough sell and it is meant to be. Don’t, however, judge the self-defense standard by the result in this one case. I will admit that I come at most criminal cases from a defense point of view and I generally support the proposition that the burden of proving virtually anything in a criminal court should be on the prosecution.
I am trying to keep this fairly short so I am not going into a lot of detail.* Also, I am trying to be analytical here, and not responding emotionally to the things I said in the first sentence of this comment.
*Also, any criminal experience I have is federal and Ohio based. I have not ever practiced crim law in WI.
Jeffro
Shorter: no one should be allowed to use “I was in fear of X” in order to shoot X.
Everyone’s afraid of something, sometime, somewhere. We could come up with endless scenarios that show just how stupid, dangerous, and unjust “I was in fear of X” is as a standard (or should I say ‘standard’).
Since intent, ‘reasonable fear of…’, and the like are nothing but subjective, we need to pass laws that say that open carry is inherently dangerous and publicly carrying firearms is against the law. You want to wave a gun around? Do it at home, at the shooting range, or while out hunting, period.
Chetan Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Again, it’s not about the *law*. In fact, it’s about the extrajudicial execution which would have been conducted on-the-spot, to any Black man, but not to this White Supremacist.
Laying all of this at the feet of badly-written and -implemented laws is letting many of the perps off scot-free.
The Moar You Know
Disagree. I think the legal system has come to the (inevitable) conclusion that it’s perfectly ok to shoot anyone who threatens the establishment, and that group has simply been expanded to include white people when it can be assumed that they are presumably of the liberal persuasion.
Message received loud and clear.
ETA: any “fault” in the laws are put there deliberately, by design, to achieve the result I outline above. None of this is an accident.
Omnes Omnibus
Wisconsin does not have a stand your ground law so that is entirely inapplicable. The main difference in WI’s law and common law self-defense is that WI has shifted the burden to the prosecution.
smintheus
Thus anytime you encounter somebody instigating a confrontation, you automatically have a defense – one might say a need – to kill them based on the presumption that the instigator is looking to create a defensible opportunity to kill you as a ‘perceived threat’.
Spanky
My guess is that if these sorts of trials continue to produce acquittals, “honor killings” are going to become a thing, where the victim’s relative/friend metes out “true justice”.
And with that, I’m all Kyled out. That backpfeifengesicht poster boy is not going to come to a good end.
Quencher
Rittenhouse’s acquittal is going to have a chilling effect on people who want to use their skateboards to bludgeon other people during protests.
oatler
This is Beirut. House-to-house fighting is acceptable. Kill your neighbor. He would have been a threat.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: OT but I left a question for you in a post yesterday. You mentioned standing rib roast in TaMara’s recipe thread – how does one cook a standing rib roast?
Is that an oven thing or a grill thing? Could a person do the reverse sear on that? Cook at 190 degrees (or whatever the temp is for that, I forget) and then toss it on the grill for a minute on each side make it look pretty and taste better?
Sure Lurkalot
@Spanky:
My hope. Making this sniveling coward think he’s a hero is bound to lead him to a confrontation where the outcome is beyond his true pay grade.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: In my family, it has always been an oven thing.
ETA: Here is Martha’s recipe.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
That’s a very expensive cut of beef. Don’t torture it on a grill! ?
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: We have you covered on the front page with a recipe post including full cooking instructions for standing rib roast and a link to the full reverse sear instructions at Serious Eats:
https://balloon-juice.com/2015/12/18/meat/
WaterGirl
@debbie: Ha!
The grill is literally one minute on each side to sear it at the end.
But maybe one wouldn’t even want to do that?
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: I’m thinking Tom Levenson or maybe Tim?
edit: No, it’s you!
Skepticat
Perhaps that’s part of why the law in Wisconsin is criminal.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Gawd, that second photo! ?
lurker
Read the post. The subject matter (trial, etc.) is beyond frustrating.
The story in the footnote is hilarious…
lurker
@WaterGirl: this thread is a little disturbing … nothing goes away on the internet, for better or worse…
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: We may butt heads, or, rather I may butt heads over administratia when I get super frustrated, but we’ve got you covered.
Also, as an FYI: I’ve recently upgraded both my iPhone to a 13 Pro from a 2015 iPhone 6 and my late 2016 iPad Mini 4 to a new iPad Mini 6. Every single problem that I’d been documenting for you are gone. With the possible exception of the commenting issue where you hit reply and just get an empty box. It hasn’t happened yet, but I usually reply on my late 2013 MacBook Pro, so I can’t rule out it won’t happen on the new devices.
But everything else now works! The site loads fast and that’s using ExpressVPN regardless of WiFi or cellular, Dark Reader attachment for dark mode, and 1Blocker.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Sorry…
Adam L Silverman
@lurker: I had my students read a really good book on how Disney finagled a state within a state in Florida. The book is called Married to the Mouse. So we’d use the textbook as the primary and then go chapter by chapter through the book on Disney.
Kirk Spencer
@WaterGirl:
So, the standing rib roast is seven (usually) prime ribs. If you were to separate and trim (remove the bone from) those ribs you would get seven ribeye steaks. Or you can keep it whole and just call it a ribeye roast (which it is). The extra price is for the bones and their connective tissue.
The greatest challenge in grilling the standing roast is the the fact it’s a /thick/ cut of meat. This fact carries a few risks which are increased by the fact it tends to be a leaner chunk of meat than, say, a brisket.
Since this is your first one, unless you or whoever is grilling is a past master at grilling and knows how to grill a thick roast, use the oven. If you really want to have a go at grilling it, practice with some other relatively lean, thick roasts. A bottom round, a coulotte, or an eye round are all about the same degree of lean while potentially thick enough to learn the lessons the hard way.
lurker
@Adam L Silverman: never got around to actually reading the book, but that is a great story to use for edumacation about sausage making…
Disney has much less autonomy in CA, even though they started here.
Adam L Silverman
@lurker: It is a good read. And it shows some of the timeless reasons that Floriduh! is Floriduh!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WaterGirl: Oven!
Don’t risk screwing it up on the grill. Serious – you don’t have the same temp control. Also, I’m a great fan of coating with stone ground mustard.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Interesting!
What was the timing of your purchases? Wondering whether the improvement is related to the ads being gone, more current devices, or the combination.
WaterGirl
@Kirk Spencer:
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
@debbie:
It’s unanimous! Oven. :-)
Omnes Omnibus
A thought to remember…. If anyone throws the not guilty verdict in your face as a taunt, just remind them that OJ was found not guilty too.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you expect there to be civil suits in Rittenhouse’s future?
Kirk Spencer
@Omnes Omnibus:
“I know, right? Just like OJ.”
Yep, I like it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WaterGirl:
It’s a slow roast. Depending on your guest preference, you never want to go much beyond medium rare for the bulk of it.
My first standing rib roast was terrifying. After the first couple of efforts, the terror subsided.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I am sure there will be.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Added – buy a good instant read meat thermometer. Doesn’t have to be fancy.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus: Rittenhouse became a proxy for white supremacist vigilante violence. At which point it was all but certain that he was going to walk.
Our criminal justice system is garbage and you know it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cacti:
I did a fair amount of criminal work in the past. I’m not in disagreement as to your conclusions regarding the state of our justice system.
Jaded today – I did some depositions in a wrongful death case this week. I saw a chess game as opposed to a quest for facts and tested justice.
Cacti
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
There are two types of people who become lawyers. Those who do it because they believe in the system, and those who do it because they don’t.
I’ve seen plenty of legal pros move from group 1 to group 2 the longer they practiced. I’ve never seen anyone move from group 2 to group 1.
TheQuietOne
@The Moar You Know: speaking of the establishment, funny how hard it is to get into certain buildings with a gun. Namely a Federal building or a courthouse. They protect themselves first and foremost!!
WaterGirl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yeah, it’s one thing to screw something up, and it’s another thing to screw something up that’s really expensive> :-)
Many moons ago my best friend and I got the really big jumbo shrimp from the fresh seafood shop ($$$) and then accidentally grilled the shit out of them so they ended up looking like little shrimp.
Teachable moment.
WaterGirl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yes, I bought one of those at the beginning of the pandemic when I wanted to bake my own bread and wanted to try the reverse sear for filets.
You cook it slowly in the oven until the temp that you want for rare, medium rare, whatever and then you just grill for a minute on each side.
Anyway, the instant read thermometer was a great purchase.
Ella in New Mexico
Something I don’t think has gotten enough discussion/coverage is that Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17 year-old who’s parents let him cross state lines with an automatic rifle to “protect” priate property in anticipation of a violent protest.
While part of me wants him to be punished for what he did, the mom in me
A. Knows how fucking STUPID AND SUBJECT TO EMOTIONAL INFLUENCE young males are so you need to be very careful with your parenting and guidance with them, and NEVER incite more emotional and stupid behavior. Also I hate young people being jailed for life for what amounts to bad parenting and premature brain development
and
B. why aren’t his fucking parent(s) been held responsible for his actions, particularly given, I believe, his mother literally drove him to Kenosha?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WaterGirl:
Oh, god – that hurts me deeply. If shrimp go more than 3 minutes on heat, you’ve got chewy rubber things.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: Everything was purchased in October. The phone arrived right away. The iPad got here last Friday – Apple’s having the same supply chain issues as everyone else and their priority is pumping out their newest phones.
I think it is a combination of the chips in them – they both have the Apple A15 Bionic Chips – and the fact that my old phone and iPad were 6 and 1/2 and 6 years old respectively. My iPad Mini 4 took the latest iPadOS update ten days before the new one arrived. And it made the device really slow and kludgy! My iPhone 6 was still getting marginal update’s for the last iPhoneOS it would take, but that was like iPhoneOS 12. My MacBook Pro won’t take the newest iOS that’s just come out, it’s too old being a late 2013 model.
Frankly, I think the issue was that everything is coded for the newer/newest tech and operating systems. The site is still very kludgey on my MacBook Pro. It will probably get an update next year when the MacBook Airs come out. And I expect I’ll see the exact same difference in functionality.
So if you’ve got newer equipment, especially much newer equipment, it is no surprise that you haven’t been able to reproduce the problems I’ve been reporting since we switched to the new build. And since I expect the site developers Cole hired have much, much newer stuff as they’d need it for professional reasons, that it also explains why they couldn’t reproduce the problems either.
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: I’ve moved from group 1 to group 2 over the past 6 years as a national security professional!
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: @WaterGirl: These are the two I got when I decided I needed to replace my old one, which if you read the post I linked to I did because I had to wing it on that standing rib roast.
Instant read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IHHLB3W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Wireless probe, set the thing, stick the probes in, walk away until you get the alert:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GE77QT0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
WaterGirl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yes, we discovered that the hard way. It was painful. We figured we should have just burned the money up on the grill.
MagdaInBlack
@Ella in New Mexico: His mother has done an interview, on Fox, I think, if you care to find the clip. It’s pretty much what I expected, as I live close enough to Antioch to be familiar with the political leanings of the area.
Just Chuck
Well I am. Not in cold blood right now, but I wish he ate a fucking lead salad. Life to me is only as precious as the regard the other party gives it.
Starfish
When you are having a tough time, find yourself a person who looks at you the way debbie looks at Adam’s meat.
Tony Gerace
@Lt. Condition: Yup. I wonder whether any Black person has ever been acquitted on the basis of a Stand Your Ground law. (I’m too lazy to do the research myself.)
Starfish
@MagdaInBlack: Can you explain how that lady is in her thirties and looks like she is sixty?
Sister Golden Bear
@Skepticat:
Josh Marshall aptly referred to it as “murder safaris.”
MagdaInBlack
@Starfish: Rough life. She’s a working class white woman who has never had much goodness in her life.
HarlequinGnoll
from reading that twitter thread what i got was “that judge is lucky hes a judge otherwise he’d be held in contempt next time he appears infront of a judge”
Repatriated
@Starfish: phrasing?
frosty
@Adam L Silverman: Site works fine on my circa 2016 iPhone SE. The last phone I’ll ever have that fits in the watch pocket of my Levi’s (sob)*. The latest upgrade to iOS15 worked, but I think that’s the last one that it will support.
* the 12mini will be a couple millimeters too wide with a case. But it’s moot since Levi’s keeps saving pennies by making the watch pocket smaller. Why yes, I’m an old, can you tell?
frosty
@Starfish: Phrasing! (Oh, you probably meant it that way!)
Villago Delenda Est
Sloppily written ON PURPOSE to give white male “Christian” ammosexuals maximum latitude to fulfill their fantasies.
Adam L Silverman
@Starfish: It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.
Also, meth.
Adam L Silverman
@frosty: Duluth Trading Company jeans. The pockets are plenty big. Make sure you buy them on the holiday sales when they’re 30% off.
rikyrah
He is White. All this nonsense you wrote?
Let him have been Black.
Phucking outta here.
He would be under the jail, if not in the cemetery already.?
Ksmiami
@Cacti: yes it is. The system is rotten and needs to be reimagined
Raven Onthill
@Ella in New Mexico: the “raw recruit in out of his depth” failure. I think you’re right.
There is, I think, a parallel with young suicide bombers; they are usually young men because they are vulnerable to manipulation by respected authorities. Which means, well, I expect we’ll see some died-in-the-wool white supremacists committing more acts of terrorism but by and large these will lead to convictions. But there will be a great and deliberate effort to persuade young people, especially young men, to provoke violence and escalate to lethal force.
rikyrah
??⚖️ Kenneth of House Pfizer™?, 1st of His Name (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 8:50 PM on Fri, Nov 19, 2021:
This is a small slice of what it feels like to have had no justice for Emmitt Till.
A significant portion of America wants to go back to those bad old days, and they’ve essentially told us that that was the height of their civilization. ??
(https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1461889738017841152?s=02)
Ohio Mom
@Ella in New Mexico:
Over at Aaron Rupar’s Twitter (@atrupar), I saw the video of Rittenhouse listening to his verdict — he’s a mess of emotion as anyone would be, waiting to find out their fate.
In the comments, people identified the woman sitting behind him as his mother. Now I don’t know what she looks like but if this woman is her, it’s so weird.
She’s completely preoccupied with her phone, or maybe it’s something in her purse, never looks up at Kyle during this critical moment for him, does not seem to be engaged at all with listening to the verdicts. Doesn’t react at all at hearing Not Guilty, Not Guilty…”
I agree with everything go you said. I can’t understand why she has not been a center of attention for driving her armed kid to the demonstration, let alone all she encouraged up to that point. I’m usually loathe to mother-blame but this is a category unto itself.
Kay
Oh, please. He “threw them out of the room” but he somehow had to do that “several times”. They were breaking down the door after the first time he “threw them out of the room”?
Rittenhouse is a celebrity now. They’ll package and promote this like a product. Can you imagine the families of the people he killed watching them put together this product package, preparing it for sale?
The vigilante shooter cases kill me because we never hear anything from the victim(s). The shooters silence them permanently and then go on talking and talking and talking. There’s something so grossly unfair about interviewing these people over and over when there’s this silent gaping hole where the victims would be.
germy
germy
germy
@rikyrah:
He’d be dead and his mother would be in prison right now if they were Black.
Kay
Hugely profitable. Everyone concerned is going to do very, very well as a result of Rittenhouse shooting and killing two people, well, except the two dead people.
“Behind the scenes with the defense team”! That’s the same defense team who told another cable tv show they “threw them out of the room”? They should get their stories straight as they travel from cable tv appearance to cable tv appearance.
germy
@Kay:
Kay
@germy:
They’ve now released four versions of the exact same opinion on Kyle Rittenhouse. That’s because they’re rugged contrarians with original ideas. Idea. One idea. Over and over and over.
Kay
@germy:
Oh, sure. Hence the celebration over the killing of two people. They managed this like reality tv. He’s a star now, Kyle. He’ll never have to work a day in his life. Huge celebrity.
No One You Know
@The Moar You Know: Every system ever created is perfectly designed to produce the results it produces. You and others have made that case. I wish more people were paying attention.
sab
@frosty: Late to the thread. Just be grateful that you still fit into your levis, never mind the phone in the pocket.