Below is my column in USA Today on the collapse of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial due to a series of prosecutorial blunders. What is worrisome is the highly slanted coverage over the last year, particularly during the trial itself. Many in the media have not focused on the countervailing facts in the case.
Today the jury will get the case following closing arguments and jury instructions. One issue to watch is how Judge Bruce Schroeder handles the gun count, which is based on what I believe is a flawed legal interpretation by the prosecution.
Here is the column:
The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse increasingly seems like a legal version of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. By only touching discrete parts of the animal, the men describe vastly different animals. In coverage of this trial, one would think that there were parallel trials occurring in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
One consensus however is emerging: Things are not going well for the prosecution.
But the reason for this developing failure depends greatly on what media you are watching other than the trial itself. It is either the product of systemic errors or systemic racism.
Rittenhouse is facing six charges that range from first-degree homicide to a misdemeanor of being a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon. At this stage, the prosecution may celebrate even a misdemeanor conviction.
Prosecution’s bumpy start, and finish
The prosecution stumbled out of the gate in the trial. Gaige Grosskreutz was the third person to be shot by Rittenhouse. Grosskreutz admitted under cross-examination that Rittenhouse did not shoot him when he had his hands up after their confrontation. He admitted that it was only after he pointed his handgun at Rittenhouse and moved toward him that Rittenhouse fired.
Likewise, a prosecution witness, Ryan Balch, testified that one of the other people shot, Joseph Rosenbaum, said that he intended to kill Kyle Rittenhouse. Other witnesses described Rosenbaum as “belligerent” or “hyperaggressive.”
Later, the prosecution called Richard McGinniss, a journalist with The Daily Caller who was reporting from Kenosha that night. He was near Rittenhouse when Joseph Rosenbaum was shot. The prosecutor told McGinniss, “I mean you have no idea what Mr. Rosenbaum was ever thinking at any point of his life. You have never been inside his head, you never met him before.”
McGinnis said, “I never exchanged words with him, if that’s what your question is.”
The prosecutor then pressed McGinnis on how he had no idea what Rosenbaum was thinking because it “is complete guesswork, isn’t it?”
That is when McGinnis delivered a haymaker, noting, “Well he said (expletive) you, and then he reached for the weapon.”
The prosecution’s own medical expert, Dr. Doug Kelly, appeared to confirm that the forensic evidence of soot injuries on Rosenbaum’s hand could be consistent with Rosenbaum trying to grab the barrel of Rittenhouse’s rifle when the gun was fired.
It got worse from there, including a glaring constitutional violation by the prosecution when Binger began his cross examination of Rittenhouse by commenting on his decision to remain silent.
The judge correctly tore into the prosecutor. Any first-year law student knows that you cannot comment on the silence of a Mirandized defendant after an arrest under the Fifth Amendment – let alone ignore a court order.
Biased media viewers
Even without the unforced errors by the prosecution, this was always a difficult case. Wisconsin has a strong self-defense standard. After a defendant claims to have acted to repel a threat, the burden is on the prosecution to rebut that claim beyond a reasonable doubt.
Instead, the prosecution prompted its own witnesses to create layers of doubt in the case. In doing so, it seems to have reduced the range of possibilities to somewhere between a hung jury and outright acquittal on the major charges.
The problem is that many people may be unaware that the case is collapsing due to such evidentiary or tactical failures. Any hung jury or acquittal will come as a shock, and the level of outrage is likely to be greater. This case began with violent rioting in Kenosha, and the news coverage is fueling the danger of renewed violence.
It is even worse in that some coverage has dismissed the trial as an exhibition of raw racism. Some have criticized Judge Bruce Schroeder after he enforced long-standing constitutional principles and defended the core constitutional right of the defendant against self-incrimination.
MSNBC host Tiffany Cross advocated for Schroeder’s removal and called on columnist Elie Mystal to discuss the matter. Mystal, who stated earlier this month that white, non-college-educated voters supported Republicans in the 2021 races in part because they care about “using their guns on Black people and getting away with it,” not surprisingly, has written that this trial is a sham.
One man – not society – is on trial
MSNBC’s host Joy Reid also attacked the trial and suggested that Rittenhouse’s emotional breakdown on the stand was fraudulent. Her guest, MSNBC legal analyst and Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, concurred and called it “the greatest performance of (his) life.”
Butler declared Rittenhouse “was well-prepared by his defense attorneys to disrupt his image as a trigger-happy vigilante who went on a shooting rampage at a Black Lives Matter protest.”
Butler, who has written that Black jurors should use “jury nullification” to refuse to convict Black defendants in drug cases, insisted in a previous appearance that an acquittal would fuel future violence by white people.
Reid added Wednesday, “If you want to know why critical race theory exists, the actual law school theory that emphasizes that supposedly colorblind laws in America often still have racially discriminatory outcomes, then look no further than the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.”
However, Rittenhouse is not to be judged for society’s historical racism, and such history does not change the underlying facts.
Either Grosskreutz (who is white) was pointing the gun at Rittenhouse’s head or he was not. Either Rosenbaum (who was white) was grabbing the barrel of Rittenhouse’s gun or he was not. Such facts do not change through CRT translations.
Many in the media rightly criticized those who encouraged riots on Jan. 6 with unsupported claims of electoral fraud. However, some of the same media figures offer distorted accounts of this trial. The narrative can overwhelm the facts.
Moreover, if left uninformed of the real legal deficiencies in the case, that narrative is likely to control the response to any failure to convict.
These protests are part of a larger debate on racism in our country. However, this trial is about the actions of one individual – not society – in 2020. Those actions are increasingly favoring acquittal on the most serious charges.
Jonathan Turley, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is also a legal analyst for Fox News.
What did the rioters contribute to our society to earn the right to destroy it?
Nothing.
Did their tax dollars pay for our civilization?
No.
They are just mindless, irrational, entitled barbarians.
They shouldn’t even be allowed to be on the streets.
Their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and perspectives are irrelevant
and should not matter, not until they have paid their fair share of the infrastructure.
Rittenhouse is on trial for saving his own life. How dare he?
IMPEACH GARLAND
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-DOJ whistleblower challenges Garland testimony, says FBI counterterrorism tool used on parents
Rep. Jim Jordan demands attorney general amend his testimony, releases evidence from the whistleblower.
A Justice Department whistleblower has provided Congress evidence that FBI counterterrorism assets were involved in the investigation of parents protesting school policies, …
—-
Jordan wrote to Garland “You testified that the Department and its components were not using counterterrorism statutes and resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings,”
“We have now received a disclosure from a Department whistleblower calling into question the accuracy and completeness of your testimony,”
—–
Threat tags being used!
Impeach Garland. The left wanted a liar to be a Supreme Court justice.
I wouldn’t mind seeing rioters and Antifa mowed down with machine guns,
if that’s what it takes to stop them from silencing me. They are not better
than ISIS or the Taliban. Tyrannize the tyrants, I say.
Why are people so unfair that they are against the very idea
of self-defense? They did the same thing to Zimmerman, too.
I wouldn’t mind seeing rioters and Antifa mowed down with machine guns,
if that’s what it takes to stop them from silencing me.
Tyrannize the tyrants, I say.
Maybe it’s about time we had a benevolent dictator.
As paradoxical as it might sound, a dictator of freedom could
be a good thing if he was the sworn enemy of the tyranny of political correctness, rioters, Antifa, and wokism,
Maybe it’s about time we had a benevolent dictator.
As paradoxical as it might sound, a dictator of freedom could
be a good thing if he was the sworn enemy of the tyranny of political correctness, rioters, Antifa, and wokism.
The world has gone made when rioters are the good ones
and those who stop rioters are the bad ones.
Alan Dershowitz: Kyle Rittenhouse ‘should be acquitted,’ sue media for calling him ‘vigilante’
Alan Dershowitz compared Kyle Rittenhouse’s situation to that of former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann from a couple of years ago. JTN
“Then he’ll bring lawsuits, and that’s the way to answer… vigilante justice is what CNN is doing, not what a 17-year-old kid under pressure may have done right or wrong. It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice.”
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I keep hearing arguments of his guilt from those like ATS and Svelaz, but this is looking like the Sandman case so, Rittenhouse stands to potentially get a lot of money from the lying left-wing news media. When the media pays up will those trying to incarcerate Rittenhouse suddenly realize how wrong they were? Doubtful. They still think the Russia Hoax and Ukraine Hoax were true. They still think the Steele Dossier was accurate and Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
One can’t’t trust those that don’t admit they were wrong. They are non-credible participants in a blog and should never be trusted.
Momentum is growing, a great thing
When All The Media Narratives Collapse
In case after case, the US MSM just keeps getting it wrong.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-all-the-media-narratives-collapse
OT:Teacher in CRT lawsuit says school districts trying to drive wedge between parents, kids
Brooke Henderson says teachers are increasingly afraid to discipline students for fear of being called a “white supremacist.” JTN
“that instructed teachers that they might be engaged in oppressive or white supremacist behavior simply by insisting on using English in the classroom, uttering that “all lives matter” or calling police on a black suspect.”
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I guess those that think CRT or its flawed agenda isn’t being promoted in schools need to start looking at other sources of information than CNN or left-wing blogs.
How Memes Twisted Facts
Multiple video clips show Rittenhouse running scared TOWARDS police when Victims 2 & 3 attacked him. If their intention was to secure Rittenhouse’s arrest, all they had to do was follow him and tell police he was the shooter. But their plans didn’t include police. They wanted to sieze Rittenhouse’s rifle and stomp the sh!t out of him! That is clearly evident from all video angles.
But while the story was still developing, supporters of the protest crafted this narrative that Victims 2 & 3 were ‘heros’ for trying to stop Rittenhouse. This narrative willfully ignores the fact that Rittenhouse was running TOWARDS police. Yet this narrative hardened like cement amongst supporters of the protests. Consequently they have a hard time understanding why the Prosecution is having such difficulty on the homicide charges. And that’s what happens when people choose to believe memes over facts.
One should note that the Michael Brown case in Ferguson Missouri got twisted by memes and false headlines. It was erroneously reported that Brown was a ‘college student shot for jaywalking’. In reality, Brown was enrolled in ‘no’ college and was initially stopped for committing a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store.
Nevertheless millions of people kept saying ‘Brown was shot for jaywalking’. It was an untrue narrative that millions chose to recognize as truth even though it wasn’t. Unfortunately this is the new norm: ‘Repeating false narratives over and over to make them accepted truths’. Trumpers do this as common practice. But the Rittenhouse case reminds us that Bernie Bros engage in this same shoe-horning of false information.
The jury is *not* going to be sequestered tonight.
OK, so I see the same names that are saying charges should have not been leveled against Rittenhouse, are the same ones who said the Capital Police officer who was doing his “job” and “protecting” the Capital and shot a rioter should have been charged with murder. But a 17 year punk, who came looking for trouble and found it, is being prosecuted unfairly.
He is being prosecuted unfairly. He’s actually not a punk. He’s a lifeguard and a good kid who came to protect his neighborhood from arson, violence, rioting and utter destruction because no one in authority was.
The prosecutor, on the other hand, is a punk, and a sociopath, who just recklessly pointed a gun at the jury, with his finger on the trigger. He should be disbarred.
If he would have stayed in his neighborhood he wouldn’t be in trouble.
If the others stayed in theirs, they would be alive.
If she had stayed at home she wouldn’t have been raped.
Not that long ago the racist Fishwings would have said, ‘if the black man stayed in his ghetto, he wouldn’t be in trouble’. That is fishings. A dumb racist.
Glad to see the FishHead admit that troubled people attacked Kyle and got what they deserved whereas no one attacked the Capital Police officer who should be put on trial.
You are a racist. The videos show him being attacked and also show him running away from more violent leftists. What do you know about about being honest. You aren’t even honest with the fact that you are clearly a racist.
This sentence in your article is quite troubling:
“Many in the media rightly criticized those who encouraged riots on Jan. 6 with unsupported claims of electoral fraud.”
Professor Turley, you are “an,” if not “the,” acknowledged expert in public interest law. Unless you have lived a double life studying the detection and prevention of computer fraud, however, you have no standing whatever to characterize “claims of electoral fraud” as “unsupported.” I have spent my entire professional life programming computers, massaging data, and generating statistics. Even so, I would never dream of pretending that I was qualified to make a claim like yours regarding anything that involved possible computer fraud. Frankly, I do not know jack shit about computer fraud. And neither do you.
Great name, Mr. Dick. Too bad your parents didn’t name you Richard. Then you could be called Dick Dick. 🙂
“Good God! Prosecutor takes the AR (an admitted exhibit), says his assistant has “ checked it to be sure it isn’t loaded.” Then, without himself opening the action to confirm unloaded, raises it and points it in the direction of the jury!
Inexcusable.”
Prosecutor Binger got his law degree from the Kim Kardashian School of Law.
Rust set, “Cold gun!” Relying on others to check a weapon handed to you without them physically showing you it’s empty, with no round in the chamber, is what’s landed Alec Baldwin and others in hot water.
Rittenhouse will be held up as pure white privilege as he should, it would be another story if a black man crossed state lines with a gun to “protect” anybody or anything.
He’s a racist … blah … blah. You need a new tactic. That “you’re a racist” crap won’t fly anymore as intimidation.
Mespo, when FishWings makes statements like that, it proves her to be a racist. She hides her racism, pledging her allegiance to white privilege because that is what she has used all her life. I don’t use it. You don’t use it, and it doesn’t exist except where racists like FishWings live.
We should all understand MLK. Color doesn’t matter, character does, but what do racists like FishWings do? They create a new barrier to race being neutral and unimportant, while character is what counts. There is nothing we can do with FishWing type racists. They want to get drunk, yell and holler. Then they want to lynch someone to satisfy their most primal needs.
“it would be another story if a black man crossed state lines with a gun to “protect” anybody or anything.”
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It would not be a story at all.
The story would be another black man shot by cops.
There are no cops around when BLM/Antifa comes to town to riot, loot, burn, destroy. The cops stand down and let it happen, silly.
The story would be another black man shot by cops.
Which is to say you would be happier if yet another black on black violent crime statistic proved the obvious. So here you go. Insert the word “black” as needed, since the local paper curiously omitted that info.
Just another day in Richmond, VA, with a Democrat Black Mayor, a Democrat Black Member of Congress, and a Democrat Black Chief of Police.
Boys killed in Friday night shooting in east Richmond were ages 9 and 14
https://richmond.com/news/local/boys-killed-in-friday-night-shooting-in-east-richmond-were-ages-9-and-14/article_a2281268-2a44-565b-8141-92d42d254235.html
The victims killed in Friday night’s shooting in Richmond’s East End were a 9-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, Richmond Police Chief Gerald M. Smith said Saturday. The 9-year-old was attempting to unlock a car door when he was gunned down.
Two men also were shot and are in stable condition. Police released few other details about Friday’s shooting, which took place around 7:30 p.m. on Nine Mile Road.
Later Saturday, at a news conference called by the Richmond NAACP, family members identified the slain 14-year-old as Rahquan “Ompa” Logan.
Smith announced he will start a task force of officers to investigate this crime and others involving gun violence and repeat offenders in the city. Smith spoke at a news conference Saturday morning alongside Mayor Levar Stoney and City Councilwoman Cynthia Newbille.
“This type of act cannot stand in Richmond,” Smith said. “Once again, the pattern continues. Our young people are falling victim to random gunshot violence over and over again.”
You are a racist.
“The prosecutor is just reciting the new left-wing dogma: left-wing violence is always allowed, while self-defense against left-wing violence is not.
Under the current regime, you don’t have rights so much as you have a duty to be a victim of left-wing mob violence.” @seanmdav
EVERYONE in this case is white, Fishy. All. WHITE. People.
aninny:
“EVERYONE in this case is white, Fishy. All. WHITE. People.”
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Yeah, very strange in a country that has a 72% white population. I was expecting more Aleuts in Wisconsin where the population is 82% white. You myopic racists are funny – dumb, too.
No, my comment meant to dispel Fishmonger’s notion of white privilege being an issue in this case. Ain’t no white privilege to be had.
Oops. Mea culpa.
Rittenhouse will be held up as pure white privilege… FishWings
Yes, the left and all its supporters will continue ignoring facts and evidence. What a surprise.
FishWings has a perspective and from that perspective he feels what he says is appropriate. The problem is that Fishwings is a racist as mentioned on the blog over and over again. If one is a racist, then some of what one says makes a bit of sense.
Fishwings:
Imagine, for a moment, that a black 17 year old armed himself and went to defend his Dad’s community from an angry mob. He’s a life guard, and an EMT cadet. While there, he handed out water and offered first aid to the same mob who taunted him and threaten to burn down the neighborhood.
He got separated from his friends. He shouted “Friendly, friendly, friendly!” but the mob closed in. A white convicted pedophile chased him at full speed. He ran, but the angry mob was in front of him, too. So he slowed when he got to some parked cars, turned, and waited until the last possible second before shooting the white pedophile. The pedo was so close to him that he had gunshot residue on his hand that had been reaching out.
The mob starts screaming, “Cranium him! Kill him!”
He gets hit by a skateboard in the neck, brining him down. He shoots.
A third man points a loaded firearm at his head. He shoots.
He does not shoot at anyone else. He passes thousands of people without shooting anyone. When aggressive people put their hands off and back up, he lowers his weapon and does not fire.
He jogs alone, chased by people yelling they want to kill him, looking for cops to turn himself in. He finally meets a cop, says he shot someone, but the cop tells him to go home. As soon as he gets home, his mother drives him to the police station to turn himself in.
If Kyle Rittenhouse were black, there would be nationwide demonstrations in his support. The mob would be labeled white supremacist homicidal racists. He would have been a symbol of black power against systemic racism. The very fact that he’d be charged at all would have been indicative of systemic racism.
Obama would say if he had a son, it would have looked like Rittenhouse.
He would have had streets, parks, and schools named after him. He would have his own statue. He would be the subject of myriad art exhibits.
He would be a hero. He would have black privilege. The same privilege that allows someone to loot, riot, and commit arson with impunity.
But since he was white, the Left feels the mob should not have been stopped.
What was Rosenbaum, the agitated, mentally unstable, convicted child molester, planning to do, running at full tilt at an armed young man? Was he going to reason with him really, really closely? Was the man with the skateboard going to stop at striking him in the neck just the one time, as chants of “Cranium him,” rose? And why would the third man point a loaded gun point blank at Rittenhouse’s head? All 3 times, should Rittenhouse have passively submitted, allowed the angry mob to do what they wanted to do, and hope he didn’t die or suffer gruesome injury?
I am amazed at how the Left manages to make this about race when Kyle Rittenhouse, and all 3 people he shot, were white. Race was not an issue at all in this incident, yet race is all the Left wants to talk about. They are the party of divisiveness and irrationality.
Andy Gno faced a crowd like Rittenhouse faced and almost died from a bleed in the head.
We are communicating with people that do not care about the truth, are pushing racism and lying all the time.
Absolutely, and at the hands of unarmed people. Mankind has managed to kill and harm each other quite well prior to the invention of firearms.
A mob is one of the most dangerous weapons there is.
Karen, you really need to stop. Please. All you do is parrot the crap you heard on Fox, and it’s geting real old. The reason for the protests was the killing of a black man, so race WAS an issue. And, once again, there’s no “Left” involved here either. Rittenhouse was a liar: lied about being qualified to render first aid, lied about being asked to come to protect a business that had been vandalized, and his “eyewitness” was an alt-right gun nut, evidence that was kept from the jury. That evidence directly went to his bias and credibility. The jury wasn’t allowed to see a video in which Rittenhouse was waving around his big-boy-penis gun and musing about shooting people. Fox didn’t tell you those things, did they?
I’m still waiting to see the proof that your hero’s landslide victory was stolen from him. It’s been over a year now. Where’s your proof? You still believe the Big Lie, even though there’s no evidence been produced after a full year, and yet, you claim there is a “Left” that is “the party of divisivness and irrationality”. Who, among “the Left” lies about a stolen election, and who, among “the Left” encouraged disciples to storm the Capitol to try to prevent the certified votes from being counted? “Divisiveness and irrationality” perfectly describe Trump disciples like you.
This trial is a sham. Self defense is not what happened. The judge couldn’t be more of a home job ref. I’d love to see how the judge reacts if the jury convicts.
He would demand a recount, if that didn’t work he could ask Rittenhouse’s supporters to break into the court house and threaten the court recorder with hanging to change the verdict.
Or threaten the court reporter with 25/8 viewing of Joyless Reid, which would likely end in seppuku.
Sound effects not included
Fishy wrote: “He would demand a recount, if that didn’t work he could ask Rittenhouse’s supporters to break into the court house and threaten the court recorder with hanging to change the verdict.”
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When Rittenhouse is acquitted, how much you wanna bet the left-wing mob will be coming for this judge to make his life miserable?
“Prosecution is trying to portray convicted child rapist Rosenbaum as a concerned citizen who “didn’t take kindly” to having a gun pointed at him and that … charging the guy with the gun was somehow the reasonable response. This is not just a joke; it’s an insult to common sense” @joelpollak
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How do corrupt, unethical prosecutors like Binger sleep at night? He should be disbarred.
“BREAKING: YouTube is suspending independent streams of the Rittenhouse trial during closing arguments” @jackposobiec
Por que, YouTube?
because the prosecutors are getting their collective heads handed to them, their actions in this trial are disgusting, but that is what the d-rats do, they are evil corrupt liars, haters, cheaters, manipulators, intimidators and complete and total hypocrites.