Archives for October 2021

Tell me America has two justice systems using a current event: https://t.co/4aJqhn5Bre

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid ? (@JoyAnnReid) October 26, 2021

For some, the teenager who shot three people on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests that followed George Floyd’s death has come to personify America’s polarization. Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial will begin Monday with jury selection. https://t.co/ZUhzAzYQcm

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 30, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse is a spottily-educated teenage lumpen-prole who killed two people and wounded a third, using a gun he shouldn’t have had in his possession, in a place where he shouldn’t have been. Those facts are generally agreed; the argument is whether the killings should be defined as ‘murder’ or ‘self-defense.’

Rittenhouse has been badly served by every authority in his life — from his feckless parents, to the Kenosha police who let him walk away without so much as confiscating the weapon, to the rightwing publicists currently using him as a fundraising tool and all-purpose prop in their war against American democracy. I do not foresee much of a future for him, regardless of any (every) eventual verdict. Possibly he will be incarcerated. Or he will walk ‘free’ and continue to be manipulated by his proudly fascist-adjacent friends, until they find some newer mascot or (my personal bet) he is emboldened by his ‘celebrity’ into committing further crimes that he won’t be allowed to walk away from.

Bruce Schroeder, the judge (currently) in charge of the trial set to begin Monday, has done Truth a favor by setting his thumb, fist, forearm, and full body weight on the scales. Per Paul Butler for the Washington Post:

… Schroeder’s decision to prohibit the use of the term “victim” is unusual but not unprecedented. The judge in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial for murdering George Floyd discouraged the prosecutors from referring to Floyd as a victim, but he did not forbid them from doing so.

But Schroeder crossed the line from jurist to advocate when he forbid prosecutors from saying “victim” because, he said, it’s a “loaded” word, but allowed the defense to say “arsonist,” “looter” and “rioter” — as if those words aren’t just as loaded. Schroeder’s decision supports the defense strategy of putting the victims on trial, to make it sound as though they got what they deserved.

Indeed, Schroeder went so far as to say that the defense lawyers can “demonize” the three men who Rittenhouse killed if they think that will score points with the jury. This is judicially sanctioned slander.

Over the objections of prosecutors, he will allow the jury to see a video of the police thanking a group of vigilantes and handing them bottles of water. The defense will use the clip to suggest that not only was Rittenhouse entitled to be in Kenosha with an assault rifle, the local police were actually glad he was there.

Yet the judge turned down prosecutors’ request to admit as evidence video of Rittenhouse beating up a teenage girl who got into a fight with his sister. Nor will the judge allow video of Rittenhouse stating, 15 days before the Kenosha shootings, “Bro, I wish I had my [expletive] AR, I’d start shooting rounds at them” about people he suspected were shoplifting…

Rittenhouse has a credible self-defense claim, even if I don’t find it ultimately persuasive. If there is reasonable doubt, the jury must acquit him. But especially in a politically charged case like this, the appearance of justice is nearly as important as justice itself. This week, in Schroeder’s courtroom, justice failed to appear.

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Death Cultists Open Thread: Kyle Rittenhouse, Sacrificial Meat-PuppetPost + Comments (105)