When Cold-Blooded Murder is Self-Defence
"[We are] heartbroken [by the verdict].""It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street."Karen Bloom, John Huber, parents of murdered 26-year-old Anthony Huber"We are all so very happy that Kyle [Rittenhouse] can live his life as a free and innocent man, but in this whole situation there are no winners, there are two people who lost their lives and that's not lost on us at all."David Hancock, spokesperson, Rittenhouse family"[The verdict is] very dramatic but not entirely surprising.""[Most lawyers who looked at the evidence had a feeling the state would not be able to clear the threshold of disproving self-defence beyond a reasonable doubt."Daniel Adams, Wisconsin criminal defence lawyer
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A young man, 17 at the time, set out to be present at a protest that erupted after a police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, left paralyzed from the waist down. These protests are known for their polarizing effect, raging rhetoric and caustic blame, invariably ending in violence, assaults and looting from an uncontrolled mob, even with police present. America's traditional, troubling, shameful black-and-white divide.
Kyle Rittenhouse took along with him a medical kit, ostensibly with the intention of offering medical assistance to any within the crowd of ostreperous and violence-prone protesters, as a good citizen. He also took along an automatic weapon, an AK-15 type assault rifle, as any good citizen supportive of the Second Amendment might. To broadcast an image of youthful 'authority', to demonstrate he was capable of looking after himself.
Before the evening was out, he looked after himself by shooting two men to death and wounding another. Men there for reasons similar to his own; interested in countering attitudes that failed to resonate with their own. In personal acrimonious confrontations, they viewed one another as challengers to American values and in acid face-offs threatened one another. Two of the men died as they each attempted to wrench the rifle from Rittenhouse's hands and to 'protect' himself, ostensibly in fear for his life, he killed them.
A third confronted him with a pistol pointed at him, conceivably with the notion that faced with a muzzle directly pointing at him, Rittenhouse would surrender his rifle. Instead, he raised it and shot Gaige Grosskreutz, 28, who lost a chunk out of one of his arms. But lived to become a witness in the trail that concluded last week over the 2020 deadly encounter.
Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, a mentally disturbed man who verbally threatened Rittenhouse and struggled with him to gain possession of the rifle, was shot to death for his troubles. Anthony Huber 26, attacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard, and also made an effort to wrench the rifle away from him, and his penalty like Rosenbaum's was death on the spot. Rittenhouse 'defended' himself out of fear for his life, and had the deadly means to do so.
The trial prosecutors sketched Rittenhouse as a reckless vigilante, provoking violent encounters. And that no remorse was evident for his killing of two men with his AR-15-style rifle. The defence, on the other hand, predictably argued their client had repeatedly been attacked, ending up shooting the two men in fear for his life. "It is unconscionable our justice system would allow an armed vigilante ... to go free" said a statement issued by the Congressional Black Caucus.
It took three days of deliberation for the jury to reach its not guilty verdict. "I did what I had to do to stop the person who was attacking me", Rittenhouse said in his own defence. The verdict, however, does not confer moral innocence on Rittenhouse, nor wipe away his responsibility for the deaths of two men on the opposite ideological side of a moral conflict. He is a free man, but he is not an innocent man.
Labels: Deadly Assault, Jury Finding, Kyle Rittenhouse, Protest, Wisconsin
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 24, 2021
