Verdict returned in Rittenhouse trial

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He should trust what you say.
I do.
You know your shite and you have a high degree of credibility.

Last edited by Pepe on 08 Dec 2021, 5:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just want closure on this case.

I don't agree with the interpretation of the law but accept what's done is done.

I'm curious: What part of the "interpretation" of the law do you disagree with (taking into account the entire statue, as written, and without excluding "inconvenient" portions in order to reach a conclusion)?

I know. But sometimes a slightly different approach from a different person can make a difference.

Let's start with the subjective interpretations of the judge Bruce Schroeder.

He's on the record as saying: "This is a long-held opinion of mine, which very few judges, I guess, share with me. I think it's a loaded - the word victim is a loaded, loaded word."

Fine....But then he ruled the men killed or wounded in this case could be called rioters, looters and arsonists if the evidence showed that to be true. To me this is jarring and disparate treatment even if there may be legal justification for it. Those words convey the message to the jury that somehow these people who were shot were deserving, were less worthy of protection of the law. To me that's bias and he should have been removed for it.

Secondly (and critically for the Grosskreutz, Huber and Rosenbaum families) Wisconsin law is almost deliberately vaguely written in the concept of provocation (I already highlighted Castle law). To me this is a key flaw in the way legislatures have written their laws to describe when a person may kill lawfully in self-defense. Wisconsin ironically does place limits on what people can claim as self-defense, Otherwise you would get vigilantes like the McMichaels been freed after they tried the same defense for shooting Ahmed Arbery,

Back to Rittenhouse. He (Rittenhouse) brought an AR-15-style rifle, loaded with 30 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition, to a volatile situation and provoked the violence that ensued. You cannot hide behind self-defense if you provoked the incident. If you created the danger, you forfeit the right to self-defense.”

However the vagueries of the wording of the law make it challenging for a jury to intepret what constitutes provocation. Wisconsin’s provocation instruction is that the limitation on self-defense comes into play only if the defendant engaged in “unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack.” Lawful but provocative behavior is apparently within bounds.

If Wisconsin law was clearer on these issues, (namely a person whose words or acts create a reasonable apprehension of imminent physical harm then this should qualify as an initial act of aggression) then the jury’s deliberations in the Rittenhouse case might be much different.

^^^ I can understand why some of these points are hard to let go of, but they’ve all been gone through, in detail, and the law simply isn’t falling as you think it should. The only thing I will repeat at this point in the conversation is that self-defense is mostly an “in the moment” determination, not one that heavily weighs putting oneself in the wrong place at the wrong time (it does make some changes, but not enough to defeat the facts in this case).

I follow some very progressive lawyers, and while they don’t like verdict, they accept that it was appropriately decided given the law as written, and that the judge was within bounds as well.

I think it’s time for you to let go. You may never understand the result for the simple reason that it feels like the wrong answer, and I get that. I can relate to that feeling, even. But I do believe it was a fair trial and a fair result using the laws in effect. If you haven’t gotten to that conclusion yet, I don’t think anyone in this thread can get you there.

I'm sorry but I feel a little like Nemo's dad bout this. and we don't actually know what the future holds for vigilante action.

Judge Schroeder seems incompetent to me. He apparently didn't allow the drone image of Rittenhouse pointing his gun at the crowd because he doesn't "trust technology" (he showed the court how his friends send him pictures on his phone and he doesn't know how to open them) and therefore he doesn't know how to use "zoom" on an image so he deemed it inadmissable. That's pretty pathetic,

The whole point of a trial is to garner all available information. The judge seems to have used his own opinion to make a lot material inadmissable including recordings of Rittenhouse talking about shooting protestors.

Admit it.
You just like the attention.

Where are your other partisan mates, btw?

Will *nothing* stop him?
He is like a god darn Terminator!
Quick, someone find a foundry!

The reason behind this would be connected to the fact that the term "victim" is "loaded" (much like "vigilante" or "murdered"), putting certain assumptions on those described as such, and the fact that the case was to determine if the people shot were the "victims" of his actions, or whether he was the "victim" of their attacks - The jury came to the later conclusion.

Similarly, the use of the other terms ("rioters", "arsonists", etc.) was permitted only so long as it had been evidenced that this was the way the individuals had been acting, not as an open door to make unfounded assertions\accusations.



Up until 2005 Victoria had similar provocation laws, and NSW still does. The legal term "provocation" has very specific meaning, as opposed to the general term used (below is from jury instructions in NSW regarding "provocation" - replaced by "extreme provocation" in 2014):

Source: https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/benchbks/criminal/provocation.html (most jurisdictions use something similar to this as a legal definition for provocation)

The mere fact of a person carrying a rifle where open-carry of such an item was legal, would not come close to meeting such a standard (pointing a rifle at someone, as the prosecution tried to introduce at the last minute, could have such a potential, but there was no real evidence of such act being presented, instead relying on a magnified image and the viewer's imagination).



First note: it was FMJ, not AP rounds he had in the rifle.
Second note: the mere possession of a firearm, regardless of ammunition type is not a provocative action under the law (see above).



You seem to have confused the dictionary term "provocation" with the legal definition.

In order for provocation to be proven, it requires "conduct of [the person who caused the provocation] was such that it could have induced an ordinary person in the position of [the person being provoked] to have so far lost self-control as to have formed an intent to kill, or to inflict grievous bodily harm upon" the person who caused the provocation.



This was a state where "open carry" was legal and there were multiple people carrying rifles in such a way with whom Mr Rosenbaum (and possibly the others) had interacted with earlier without incident - given Mr Rosenbaum's earlier actions around a group of such people, it would be hard for anyone to believe that his seeing a single individual carrying a slung rifle walk past where he were standing could in any way put him in "reasonable apprehension of imminent physical harm".

I'm watching the trial, and one thing I have a question about it is, how come none of the detectives in the case seem to be cross examined on the stand?

You have several civilians that are, but no police detectives in the case. Was the prosecutor trying to avoid putting them on the stand because they felt it would bring their case down in anyway? Or did I just miss them when trying to find all the parts of the trial online?

I am not sure I can't remember why a number of people were not called as witnesses. For example the girlfriends of Huber and Rosenbaum.

Well as for Rosenbaum it seemed he was suicidal because he got out of prison recently, and was yelling at other people to kill him, according to witnesses there. The prosecution wanted to protray Rosenbaum as a hero, since they kept saying he was a hero in the closing argument. So could it be, that they didn't call his gf because they didn't want the gf to confirm that he was suicidal and therefore out to try to attack someone to provoke them into killing him? In other words his gf would make him look less heroic if they put her on the stand?

Last edited by ironpony on 08 Dec 2021, 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree these points make the outcome plausible given there is sufficient doubt for the jury. Particularly since judge Schroeder wasn't interested in entertaining the drone footage.

On your last point relating to Rosenbaum using the n-word and interacting with the crowd, I don't recall Rittenhouse being present at that juncture so how could he have ascertained Rosenbaum's aggression at that point? I thought the pair interacted when Rittenhouse claimed to put out a dumpster fire started by Rosenbaum.

I think there's sufficient evidence to suggest Rosenbaum was not in his right state of mind. Huber and Grosskreutz did intend to disarm Rittenhouse,

After Grosskreutz the crowd dispersed and nobody confronted Kyle. It's interesting to know what was going on in the minds of people who saw Grosskreutz get shot and why nobody pursued Kyle after that.?