Kyle Rittenhouse, previous owner of a Smith & Wesson M&P15

[raison de arizona]

I get what you are saying and he definitely got in over his head. But he was looking for a fight.

[pipistrelle]

Anders, Rittenhouse fantasized about shooting looters shortly before The Event. I realize that it wasn’t admissible, but it is 100% true and indicative of his frame of mind.

Really? I thought as a teenager with no medical training, experience, or knowledge, he was there to benefit people with his amazing skillset. Who knew?

[bob]

I lurve this thread for the asymmetrical reverse trolling.

[Dave from down under]

Anders, Rittenhouse fantasized about shooting looters shortly before The Event. I realize that it wasn’t admissible, but it is 100% true and indicative of his frame of mind.

Really? I thought as a teenager with no medical training, experience, or knowledge, he was there to benefit people with his amazing skillset. Who knew?

He needed someone with gun shot wounds so that he could do his amazing combat medic thang!

Since no-one was volunteering… he just *had* to step up!

[andersweinstein]

I get what you are saying and he definitely got in over his head. But he was looking for a fight.

Going there "looking for a fight" in general would not be legally relevant to his self-defense claim unless he provoked the fight through illegal action likely to provoke others to attack him. (And even there, WI's self-defense law is surprisingly generous to provokers.)

But I'm sorry, I don't see any reason to believe he was looking for a fight in the sense of trying to instigate any confrontation. I certainly don't see trial evidence suggesting he was looking for a fight for reasons I gave -- no video or testimony shows him behaving in a way suggestive of looking for a fight, and some shows the exact opposite. On the other hand video DEFINITELY shows Rosenbaum looking for a fight, as confirmed by testimony about his hyper-aggressive behavior and him on video. Why can't Rittenhouse's motives be just like those of the other armed folks he was with, Dominick Black, Ryan Balch, etc and he only got into trouble because he was stupider? (Dumb enough to keep roaming around looking for people who wanted his first-aid service, and then to go wandering off alone into trouble thinking everyone recognized him as a helpful guy).

In particular, there seems to me to be strong evidence the conflict did not arise because Rittenhouse went looking for a fight. There's strong evidence he went walking down the road with a fire extinguisher to put out a fire on another Car Source property, calling out "anyone need medical" and yelling "friendly friendly friendly" as he ran to the lot. At that point he came up against Ziminski and Rosenbaum (who had ran ahead, per FBI video) and Roesnbaum ran out at him from behind a car after he went passed and came up against Ziminski (gun out in hand, though not pointing, per KR's testimony and video shortly after the moment, and Ziminski's shot into the air, and consistent with Ziminski's behavior earlier, when he is on video with gun out at his side during a dispute). We don't know exactly what happened at the moment of encounter -- there is about a 5 second gap in the video and the drone video is a degraded blur of light and shadow at it's distance. It's always possible KR confronted them in some aggressive way, but unproven, I think. Isn't it just as plausible Rosenbaum attacked him just because he was an aggressive criminal pissed off at the thought someone might presume to interfere with his criming? Two people testified Rosenbaum said he'd kill the motherfuckers if he got them alone, and now he had KR, smallest and weakest of the lot, alone. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the latter based on the evidence I saw.

As I see it you and others with your view come at this with a kind of circumstantial inference, but it's based on prejudice, an unshakeable prior. You think anyone who shows up that way (and said what he said at CVS) *must* have been "looking for a fight". So, even if prosecution didn't present any evidence for it, you still believe it must have happened. I just don't think that's a good procedure. It's not reliable. It just winds up convicting him in advance based on prejudice, in a way that he could never undermine wirh evidence. It's kind of an unfalsifiable belief. Just think about it: what if, contrary to what you suppose, he was just as he presented, someone going there to put out a fire and give medical aid and not looking to instigate any conflicts? You would never be able to get any evidence to convince yourself of this. So your beliefs about this are not really sensitive to evidence, I think.

You can believe what you want. All I really want folks to accept is that a reasonable jury making a good faith effort to apply law to the facts given evidence they saw could VERY EASILY wind up acquitting. This because prosecution has the burden of disproving his self-defense case beyond reasonable doubt, and he had a pretty good case on the evidence. It's very different from OJ too, because in this case they could see all shootings on video and there was not that much factual dispute at all, I think.

[Dave from down under]

Juries have been known to get it wrong.
Judges have been known to be biased.
Prosecutors have been known to be incompetent.

We know Kyle armed himself, went to an area of confrontation, killed a person, killed another person, maimed another person.

His actions resulted in 2 deaths and maimed another.

All the excuses in the world will not change that reality.

OJ Kyle the baby faced killer.

[andersweinstein]

We know Kyle armed himself, went to an area of confrontation, killed a person, killed another person, maimed another person.

His actions resulted in 2 deaths and maimed another.

All the excuses in the world will not change that reality.

Sure, but this doesn't have any relevance to whether he bears moral responsibility or did anything wrong. It's all compatible with the idea that he comitted justifiable homicides in reasonable self-defence so he saved his own life from bad guys. The ability to frame events this way proves absolutely nothing.

I've said this before but: suppose a Black man goes to a Klan rally to peacefully counterprotest by standing with a sign saying "Love Thy Neighbor". But also openly carries a rifle just in case he runs into trouble and to deter people from messing with him. Suppose he does get attacked, tries to flee, winds up cornered and then shoots in self-defense. Then suppose he tries running to the police, but members of the crowd shout "Hey that n**r just shot someone, get his ass, cranium that boy" (exact quotes from Rittenhouse case) and attack him with various objects, knocking him to the ground, and he winds up shooting again in self-defense.

Would you keep saying that this is all his fault because he went there looking for trouble? That the attacks were all really his fault because his actions were provocative? That "All the excuses in the world will not change the reality that his actions resulted in 2 deaths and he became a killer"?
But arguably he is in the same situation as Rittenhouse was -- doing something provocative but not illegal, attacked first by a bad guy, shooting in reasonable self-defense, and then getting attacked some more by a mob predisposed to assume the worst of him as he fled.

So maybe you personally are consistent enough to take this line. But I really don't think many others who say things like this are. I think the folks saying things like this are just blind to how unprincipled they are (meaning: they are not relying principles that they would apply consistently to folks they were not sympathetic to, or who are considered on the "other" side). It's all just beggging the question against his claim to have shot only in reasonable self-defense.

Something like this came up in the Austin case of Garrett Foster, who carried an assault weapon at a protest and approached a right-wing guy (Daniel Perry) in a car in a way that made Perry feel threatened and shoot. In that case Perry was convicted. Do you think that was all Foster's fault for provocatively walking around with his gun? Or do you think it was OK because he was on "our" side?

[Dave from down under]

No one is buying what you are selling

[bob]

No one is buying what you are selling

[New Turtle]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

[pipistrelle]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

The guy who was shot multiple times on the ground, then left to die while KR wandered off, should have bounced right back up.

[Dave from down under]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

The guy who was shot multiple times on the ground, then left to die while KR wandered off, should have bounced right back up.

4 shots
2 to cripple
2 in the back to get a kill

No points in “Call of duty - Kenosha” unless you get the kill!

Bang bang Kyle made sure that he was dead…

[Dave from down under]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

In OJ Killer Kyle’s world, he is the Hero-Victim and all he shot *deserved* it!

His fan club just hope to be able to get away with murder like he did when they start killing.

[andersweinstein]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

This way of putting it is just more question-begging. I think Rittenhouse was the victim, most clearly in the first attack. He was attacked by Rosenbaum, I believe without having done anything to provoke or justify it. I don't rejoice in death, but it does seem fair to say Rosenbaum was responsible for his own death. He was the one who was looking for trouble, looking for a fight, had no business being there. If Rosenbaum hadn't been there and attacked, no lives would have been lost.

So Rosenbaum is the one we all should be blaming ... BUT, because Rosenbaum was with the protestor group and Rittenhouse with the "militia", people think mistakenly he was one of "us" and Rittenhouse one of them, and can't see that for partisan blinkers.

The subsequent shootings seem more tragic results of confusion, kind of the fog of war. But none of them had to attack him and put him in reasonable fear for his life. They didn't see what happened with Rosenbaum. Rittenhouse was manifestly running toward the police line whose lights they could all see. He was not acting in any way like a threat. Grosskreutz was not afraid to tail him closely and ask him questions on his live stream. Grosskreutz himself didn't have to bring a gun, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have gotten shot.

[Suranis]

[Dave from down under]

[andersweinstein]

It seems impossible to defend killer kyle without blaming the victims. I guess they did it to themselves.

The guy who was shot multiple times on the ground, then left to die while KR wandered off, should have bounced right back up.

I would just say he shouldn't have attacked an innocent kid.

[Dave from down under]

Kyle is such a failure!
Even with coaching he couldn’t cry on cue!

[Dave from down under]

…. an innocent kid.

[andersweinstein]

I recall (vaguely) a line from Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line in which police said of their suspect something like "he almost seemed to be protesting his innocence too much". The film goes on to make a persuasive case that he WAS innocent, and in fact his conviction was ultimately overturned in part due to publicity from that film. It sounds like police, convinced or motivated to believe he was the guy, interpreted this behavior, normal from an innocent person, in the light of their preconception, so that it appeared to them as just more sign of guilt.

In a similar way, I think anyone confidently asserting Rittenhouse's breakdown was fake has given a sure tell that they're prejudiced against him. This because human beings can't reliably tell real from faked emotion, though they think falsely they can. So, all that is going on is that you are revealing what preconceptions you'are projecting into a kind of Rorschach figure. Having convicted him in advance, of course the breakdown shows up for you as mockable fakery. I think one would do better to be agnostic about it and focus on more reliable sources of evidence.

Another detail is that I think many of the people confidently making this assessment don't seem to understand that what was presented was not crying, but a PTSD panic attack, a different sort of thing which might well not produce tears.

[pipistrelle]

The shark done been jumped.

[andersweinstein]

No one is buying what you are selling

I could go to a right-wing forum where there'd be an equally unanimous consensus on the other side. Consensus among a partisan group of like-minded thinkers is no sign of truth. Pointlessness ... well ok. But not truth.

[Dave from down under]

No sympathy for those he killed or maimed?

He killed!

He maimed!

His actions!

His responsibilities!

Your excuses…. Phahhh!

[Sam the Centipede]

I could go to a right-wing forum where there'd be an equally unanimous consensus on the other side. Consensus among a partisan group of like-minded thinkers is no sign of truth. Pointlessness ... well ok. But not truth.

Not the strongest of debating points, paraphrased: "I'm not the only crazed right-wing nutter who excuses murder if the victims are from a group I despise and demonize."

Your moral compass is way out of kilter. Or you just enjoy trolling? Weird!

[Dave from down under]

It’s almost as if he is preparing his own defence before he needs it…