Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

[Dill]

(10-30-2021, 02:19 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: jj22 Wrote:What are we telling people who want to kill? Go seek trouble, start trouble, and kill and claim self defense.

Dill Wrote:I think the bolded is one of the most interesting questions raised by this case. 

I would disagree. Making that claim works under the assumption that Rittenhouse was there with the intent to kill. Given his attempts to escape the situation, first, the likelihood of that is slim. Unless we see evidence presented in the trial that shows Rittenhouse was there with intent to do harm, that question isn't really being raised by anyone other than those that are trying to convict based on anything other than the actual evidence before us. That's not how the legal system works.

No. No construction of Rittenhouse's intent is required for other militia types to draw JJ's implication from a Rittenhouse acquittal.  

That would signal that there may be no consequences for jumping into a riot with a weapon and shooting anyone who tries to take it away--or anyone your armed (and very unnecessary) presence may provoke to violence. 

So long as the right "actual evidence" is before the court, including your claim you didn't "intend" to kill anyone and were "protecting property" or "helping the police," you are within your rights to rush, armed, into the pandemonium the police are supposedly tasked with sorting out. 

If that's how the legal system works, then that is also why people are now questioning that system.

(10-30-2021, 02:19 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: The problem with brining up cases from different states with very different circumstances is it comes of as trying to muddy the waters and deflect from the current topic. The Alexander situation was a result of a law in Florida that did not allow for warning shots. Warning shots are a controversial topic in self-defense/stand-your-ground discussions. They put bystanders at risk (that bullet is going to go somewhere and isn't going to stop until it hits something) and it can also be argued that if you feel confident enough to fire a warning shot to attempt to end a threat, then the threat may not have been great enough to warrant lethal force in the first place (not saying I agree with this, but it is an argument that has been made).

There was also some poor handling of the case that should never have happened, but the law was as it was. It was a bad law and, IIRC, it was changed because of this case.

Legislators frequently consider cases from different states in writing laws, and courts and lawyers do in interpreting law. They look at what the cases do and do not have in common, as we are doing here when we bring up cases like Zimmerman's and Alexander's. That Alexander initially got 20 years for firing a warning shot rather than killing an attacker, and Zimmerman got off for killing an "attacker" he deliberately confronted, makes these cases useful comparisons in any case of armed do-gooding which results in homicide.

Perhaps we are not addressing the same topic. For me the Rittenhouse case raises general legal and political questions about law, referenced by JJ in this thread's opening post, and which are not closed by simple declarations of what courts must rule given current law and the evidence in this case. 

The "bad law" you reference above is still a bad law in my book, but it was changed somewhat because of political pressure created by public awareness of its consequences.  I.e., laws don't change themselves. Some sector of the voting public discerns a discrepancy between outcomes the law is expected to produce and the outcomes it actually produces. In such cases, that the "law is as it was" begins rather than closes discussion.

And that is why the majority of respondents to this thread are surprised that a 17-year-old can carry a weapon from his state into another, following a report of riots, and then hear that the muddled actions in the videos we see can be interpreted to clearly show "self defense," once factors placing an armed underage perp in a riot are determined to be legally irrelevant.