cmarshall

How long a prison term would you give him?

I don't believe Rittenhouse was faking his weeping on the stand. He was clearly reliving the highly stressful events of that night to say nothing of how stressful it is to give testimony in the witness stand in the hopes of avoiding lifetime imprisonment. Don't forget Rittenhouse was then and is now a child. But he still deserves a long stretch in prison.

Not surely. They have five counts to consider. The Times cited a case in CA that went thirty-five hours on just two counts. So far the Kenosha jury has twenty-three hours in. Here's my prediction: First-degree reckless homicide of Rosenbaum: guilty First-degree intentional homicide of Huber: not guilty Two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety: guilty and guilty Attempted first-degree intentional homicide of Grosskreutz: not guilty For bonus points, Judge Schroeder's ruling on pending motions for mistrial: On improper questioning of defendant on stand: sustained On failure to discover a version of aerial surveillance tape: denied The fact that the jury has deliberated for so long without reporting themselves as hung to the judge suggests that they believe they can achieve consensus on the outstanding counts. So, I think they won't be hung after all.

Reading comprehension not your strong point then? The law you cite exactly confirms what I have been telling you. It is only when an attacker, i.e. Rosenbaum, threatens the other person, i.e. Rittenhouse, with "death or great bodily harm" that the other person can respond with lethal force. So, according to your text, Rittenhouse could claim self-defense for responding with a lesser degree of violence if attacked by Rosenbaum even if he had initiated the aggression, but not with lethal violence except in the case that Rosenbaum presented an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to Rittenhouse, which, being unarmed, he never did. Therefore, Rittenhouse's killing of Rosenbaum was not self-defense, but murder. Q.E.D. and thank you for the citation of the WI law.

Actually, I think Gaige Grosskreutz, the EMT who always carried a pistol and pulled it on Rittenhouse, but couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger and instead got shot, is like most gun owners suffering from the same fantasies of heroic rescue that animated Rittenhouse. Carrying a gun doesn't make you safer, it makes you less safe as we see from how it turned out for Grosskreutz. The same is also true of Rittenhouse as well as Travis McMichael who gunned down the unarmed Ahmaud Arbery. Rittenhouse and McMichael were afraid of being shot with their own weapons. So, they the killed the unarmed guy instead. All of them including Grosskreutz are idiots.

I changed my mind. Originally, I was persuaded by an online lawyer's commentary that since Rittenhouse was chased by the crowd, Rittenhouse was not the aggressor and that his killing might indeed meet the legal standard of self-defense even if Rittenhouse was otherwise morally repugnant. However, further discussion by more than one lawyer, not in this thread, persuaded me that Rittenhouse lost his legal claim to self-defense either when he pointed his gun at Rosenbaum and/or others, if he actually did that, or when he shot Rosenbaum without ever having been under immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm from Rosenbaum. From that point on Rittenhouse was an active shooter and a murderer whom the people chasing him were trying to disarm. So, you can speak for yourself as your capacity to process new information.

Whatever aggressive behavior Rosenbaum might have exhibited toward Rosenbaum is completely, 100% irrelevant to the murder charge in Rittenhouse's indictment. No matter how aggressive Rosenbaum was it doesn't justify Rittenhouse's shooting him unless and until Rosenbaum threatens Rittenhouse with immediate death or grievous injury, which he never did. Only under that degree of immediate threat would Rittenhouse's shooting of Rosenbaum have been protected as self-defense. Talking about Rosenbaum's aggressive behavior that does not rise to that degree of threat no more justifies his killing than complaining that he picked his nose in an offensive manner.

A person who persistently claims not to recognize the difference between plain old stupid teenager behavior and shooting an unarmed victim to death has earned a place of prominence on my ignore list.

You don't get it. Rosenbaum's being aggressive and even threatening, even if true, do not justify shooting him. Only if Rosenbaum posed an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm to Rittenhouse would Rittenhouse's shooting him be protected as an act of self-defense. There has been no evidence that Rosenbaum ever posed such a threat. He had no weapon. At the time that Rittenhouse shot him he was four feet away from Rittenhouse. He never got at grip on Rittenhouse's assault rifle, much less did he come close to getting possession of it. Therefore, Rosenbaum never posed an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm to Rittenhouse. So, Rittenhouse's killing of Rosenbaum was murder, not self-defense.

So, in your view even mass murderers like Adam Lanza who killed twenty-seven people at Sandy Hook would have retained a right of self defense against anyone with a weapon who tries to stop him with lethal force? Does that include against the police? I don't think you have thought this through.

Interesting story of jury duty. I once participated in hanging the jury, but I wasn't the only holdout. It was seven to five for conviction on a drug charge. Some of the other jurors were annoyed at me, but I made a point of being courteous to every one of them. For whatever reason it never got ugly. I am sorry to hear that your jury duty was so unfortunate. In fact, in my case I refused to convict as an act of jury nullification of the anti-drug laws in New York City and especially the racially biased method of enforcing them. That <deleted> off the judge who believed, no doubt sincerely, that juries are entitled to rule oonly n matters of fact, but not of law. Nevertheless, he knew better than to take reprisals against a juror.

Even if we were to accept your contention that Rittenhouse did not point his gun initially at Rosenbaum, it wouldn't lessen his guilt. Rittenhouse at all times had a legal obligation to retreat from any threat that Rosenbaum may have posed to him with the only exception in the case that Rosenbaum posed an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm to Rittenhouse. Only at that moment would firing his weapon at Rosenbaum have been protected as self-defense. But that never happened. Rosenbaum never got his hand on Rittenhouse's weapon whatever his intentions may have been and Rosenbaum had no weapon of his own. Therefore, Rittenhouse is guilty of at least one of the counts of murder against him.

Rittenhouse was not indicted for being stupid, but for murder.

Retreating after you have killed an unarmed person who never posed an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm to you does not fulfill your obligation to retreat to avoid the crazy person.

But Rittenhouse admitted on the stand that he knew that Rosenbaum was unarmed. Since WI for all its lax gun laws does not have a "stand your ground" statute, Rittenhouse was obliged at all times to retreat from the unarmed Rosenbaum who never posed an immediate threat to Rittenhouse's life. At the time he was shot, Rosenbaum was four feet away from Rittenhouse from which distance he could not immediately have seized Rittenhouse's assault rifle. As far as I am aware Rosenbaum never did actually get his hand on Rittenhouse's gun. Therefore, any threat that Rosenbaum could have presented was only possibly in the future, never an immediate threat as required to justify self-defense.

That's possible, but it's also possible that the jury is only hung on one or more counts, but has reached a verdict on others. This seems likely to me. I think Rittenhouse will be convicted for killing Rosenbaum at least.

The most coherent account I have found so far is that Rittenhouse pointed his gun at Rosenbaum thereby committing the felony of assault with a deadly weapon at which point he cannot claim self-defense. Rosenbaum charges Rittenhouse who, afraid that the unarmed Rosenbaum might kill him with his own gun, fires four shots into Rosenbaum, the last of which is a fatal shot in Rosenbaum's back. From this point on the crowd identifies Rittenhouse as an active shooter and tries to disarm him. So, Rittenhouse is guilty on all counts and should face a long prison term. However, since the jury is still deliberating, there is a possibility that they are hung on one or more counts. And Judge Schroeder could at any moment accept the defense's motion for a mistrial, even after a guilty verdict.

Columnist Farhad Manjoo has a good column today in the NY Times about Rittenhouse's gun. Rittenhouse killed the unarmed lunatic Rosenbaum whom other witnesses considered posed no threat to anyone. Rittenhouse acknowledges that Rosenbaum was unarmed, but killed him because he was afraid that Rosenbaum might seize Rittenhouse's own gun and kill him with it. So, he killed Rosenbaum with four shots the last and fatal one of which was fired into Rosenbaum's back. So, Rittenhouse kills unarmed people out of a fear of his own weapon. Turns out that's exactly the defense offered by Travis McMichael when he shot and killed the unarmed Ahmaud Arbery. That’s because it cleverly unraveled some of the foundational tenets of gun advocacy: That guns are effective and necessary weapons of self-defense. That without them, lawlessness and tyranny would prevail. And that in the right hands — in the hands of the “good guys” — guns promote public safety rather than destroy it. *Edited for fair use policy* https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/opinion/kyle-rittenhouse-guns.html

It's always interesting how the right-wingers love guns, religion, and authoritarian leaders making decisions for them instead of fundamentally democratic methods like trial by jury.

I think it is possible that Schroeder will indeed interfere with the verdict in one way or another, although if he does so it will be because he is as biased toward Rittenhouse as you are, not because the evidence in the case is insufficient to support a guilty verdict on any counts. Setting aside the verdict in a high profile criminal case almost never happens, just because it negates the fundamental principle that juries decide cases, unless the defendant waives a jury trial.

Did this insight into the workings of the Rittenhouse jury come to you in a dream?

Maybe you should read up on how the American criminal justice system is supposed to work.

Well, technically he might be able to do that, since his decision on the motion for a mistrial is pending, but that would be just too extraordinary even for a judicial miscreant like Schroeder. A judge cannot set aside an acquittal, only a guilty verdict. If he were effectively to use the motion for a mistrial to overrule an acquittal I think he would be disciplined by the judicial hierarchy. It's also possible that the defense could simply withdraw their motion for a mistrial in the event of an acquittal.

If Schroeder makes you sad, don't look over at the Supreme Court justices.

Very odd. If Schroeder is going to cancel the whole proceeding, why allow the jury to deliberate? Suggests to me that he is preserving a way to overturn a guilty verdict that might look marginally less egregious than actually setting aside the verdict. That's just speculation, of course, but it's based on Schroeder's display of extraordinary bias to date in favor of Rittenhouse.