Saturday, November 20, 2021

My Only Word On Rittenhouse

What got him off was not the judge (who violated the TeeVee/movie norms of what a judge should do, but as a judge IRL, he was pretty mild) nor instructions like "Don't call the people who were killed 'victims'." That's actually legitimate practice and followed in almost every criminal trial. Innocent until proven guilty, remember? “Victims” are “of crimes.” The point of the trial is to determine whether or not there was a crime.

What got Rittenhouse off was the idiotic notion of "self-defense," which has become what Madison Cawthorn called it:  "Be armed, be dangerous."  Because the guy with the gun who's left standing is always the "good guy."  That general concept, and the legal concept of "self-defense" which would have been in the jury charge, and this particular testimony (good a point as any to lay blame) were the real problems:

"The prosecution's real problems began when one of their key witnesses, the victim who survived, took the witness stand, and he essentially on cross-examination conceded self-defense," she told host Chuck Todd. "He talked about the fact that there was a gun in his hand. The prosecution tried to argue their way out of that situation, but I think the die was cast in a significant way at that point."

The judge?  He's a distraction for people who didn't attend the trial and don't know what questions the jury was asked to answer.  He had almost nothing to do with this.  The law, almost entirely, did.  That and the fact Rittenhouse was a kid, and probably sympathetic (he struck me as a sociopath incapable of remorse or guilt, who wept for himself on the stand.  But most people are sympathetic to weepers, and don't imagine people can be sociopaths, which is to say in the vernacular, "monsters."  Double that for anyone perceived to be a "child."  Well, white kids; never black kids.).

At this point I'm tempted to rail against the idiots on Twitter who find their tweets on "Bad Legal Takes"  because hand to God we do not teach basic civics or basic criminal law protections (like double jeopardy) in this country.  I will just point out that justice is done in this country; just not everywhere, all the time, all at once.

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