The Gaming Den

They just dropped the weapon charges in the Rittenhouse trial. Having not seen a thread on it here, I was wondering if it was something folks wanted to talk about.

I am pretty upset that it seems like Rittenhouse is going to get off, and all the new discussions of mistrial with prejudice are beyond my understand of The Law™. This has me asking several questions, which I pose to you, my dear TTRPG dorks pedants card-carrying Antifart members. Is Rittenhouse really going to get off with no conviction on any charges? Can there/will there be appeals or a retrial? How did it even get to this point?

The case seemed pretty clear cut to me. Rittenhouse was supposed to guard some car lot, left the car lot, maybe chased some people(?), then got spotted by a group who tried to disarm him, shot Rosenbaum 5 times (one or more of which were in the back!), then shot 2 other people (one of whom had a pistol and had apparently both pointed it at Rittenhouse and then lowered it, and then pointed it back at Rittenhouse?), ultimately killing 2 of his 3 victims. And he did all of it with a gun he could not legally own. Am I missing something on how all of that shit is legal? I thought putting yourself into a dangerous situation and then escalating to deadly force when the situation gets predictably dangerous was not legal outside of Castle Doctrine and Hold Your Ground. But I'm also kinda dumb, so I could be wrong there.

Oh boy, I can't wait to hear Kaelik's take on this. Love me some lawyer jargon.

The system is designed so if you THINK or CLAIM TO THINK that your life is in danger, you're allowed to defend yourself.

It usually works well enough that if you walk into someone else's house (by accident, of course) and they point a gun at you, and you shoot them, you can still claim self defense. The code word is 'I neutralized the threat'.

Obviously if you threaten to kill someone and they try to defend themselves by trying to kill you and you kill them you created the situation that required you to defend yourself. But as long as the situation EXISTED, and you're white, you'll usually be able to beat the charge.

1) Yes he's going to get off on everything. (probably.) This has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with how many of the jury are racist pieces of shit (if more then 2, it's Hung at worst for him.)

2) The first thing you need to understand is how a self defense claim works in reality, not in pretend legal analysis. It goes like this:
a) The defense tries to say "don't you think the stupid victim deserved it? Don't you feel like you would have done it? Isn't my client a Cool Guy(TM) that you like?"
b) The jury basically votes based on whether they agree or not.

3) Now, having established what ACTUALLY determines whether someone is convicted, here's why when people do the law school analysis, Rittenhouse did murder.

A self defense claim is grounded on proving a bunch of things, in particular the relevant version of two of those things in Wisconsin law are:

Wisconsin Law wrote:(2) Provocation affects the privilege of self-defense as follows:
(a) A person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack him or her and thereby does provoke an attack is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense against such attack, except when the attack which ensues is of a type causing the person engaging in the unlawful conduct to reasonably believe that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. In such a case, the person engaging in the unlawful conduct is privileged to act in self-defense, but the person is not privileged to resort to the use of force intended or likely to cause death to the person's assailant unless the person reasonably believes he or she has exhausted every other reasonable means to escape from or otherwise avoid death or great bodily harm at the hands of his or her assailant.
(b) The privilege lost by provocation may be regained if the actor in good faith withdraws from the fight and gives adequate notice thereof to his or her assailant.
939.48(2)(c)(c) A person who provokes an attack, whether by lawful or unlawful conduct, with intent to use such an attack as an excuse to cause death or great bodily harm to his or her assailant is not entitled to claim the privilege of self-defense.

So here you can see part a) which is very poorly written but is probably supposed to mean the general self defense principle that if you show up and threaten someone with lethal force you can't then argue that you used lethal force to protect yourself from their attempt to prevent you from using lethal force. Part c) indicates that if you show up intending to provoke a response so you can kill people, you don't get to kill people.

We all know that Kyle Rittenhouse DEFINITELY did c). He was 100% taking a gun to go kill people and when he marched into the protest in goosestep and started picking fights and told people he was pointing the gun at him, he did it to generate the excuse to fulfill his obvious goal of getting to live the vigilante fantasy of killing the evil "rioters." But it's actually quite hard to prove that, especially since the judge excluded the video of Kyle saying he wanted to shoot "looters" because he thought the jury would improperly believe that video of Kyle saying he wanted to shoot looters was evidence that he shot these people for being looters.

But it is a little easier to "prove" the escalation and threat in a). If you show up somewhere and threaten to kill someone, then you don't get any self defense claim if they try to stop you from killing them.

Now, of course, whether Rittenhouse threatened them is a complex "factual" question for the jury. Because they jury gets to decide what it believes happened and whether a "reasonable person" would feel threatened by it. So when Kyle Rittenhouse told people he was picking a fight with that he was pointing a loaded assault weapon at them, the jury gets to decide if that was a threat or not.

But like..... it obviously was. We can all agree on this right? In reality? I don't have to explain why that's a threat of lethal force?

Then separately you would have to have a tougher argument where you have to figure out whether the Nazi kid opening up with his assault rifle on someone constituted a "Threat" to everyone else who tried to stop him. You can certainly see why they would feel threatened, but it might not be a threat because of some difficult to articulate conception that he didn't intend it as a threat, just the act of "self defense."

You also have to argue about whether the amount of force used by Rittenhouse was the least necessary to escape the situation. Obviously we all recognize that shooting a guy in the back a few times is not that, but this is a losing argument because fundamentally the result of a shooting situation with an automatic weapon is always going to get weird, and if you are forced to argue that it would have been okay for him to pull the trigger, but not HOLD IT DOWN longer, then you are fucked and losing this case. Now that's a great argument for why people shouldn't be allowed to show up to any public gathering with an automatic rifle, but that doesn't win you a murder conviction.

Since the main issues are "factual" jury issues, the jury can come back however they want, and the prosecutor isn't going to have any serious appeal. Appeals are designed to almost never work on purpose, mostly because we love locking up black and poor people and we wouldn't want them winning an appeal, so to get a new trial you have to prove that a decision by the judge about evidence to be excluded or admitted would have created a situation in which the jury COULD NOT POSSIBLY have ruled the way it did. This is an absurd standard, and isn't going to be met by anyone, so the jury's verdict is probably going to hold whatever it is.

I want to meet the person who considers a loaded AR-15 being pointed at them to be anything other than a threat. Anyone who rules Not Guilty for any of Rittenhouse's numerous crimes is as bad as he is afaic.

Why do I do this to myself? Why do I keep checking MPSIMS when it only brings me Facebook-caliber misery?

Because you're desperately hoping for something interesting?

Kaelik wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 15, 2021 8:37 pm

but this is a losing argument because fundamentally the result of a shooting situation with an automatic weapon is always going to get weird, and if you are forced to argue that it would have been okay for him to pull the trigger, but not HOLD IT DOWN longer, then you are fucked and losing this case. Now that's a great argument for why people shouldn't be allowed to show up to any public gathering with an automatic rifle, but that doesn't win you a murder conviction.

Minor point, but he was armed with a semi-auto AR-15 clone, not an automatic weapon. The news and the public constantly confuse assault weapon and assault rifle though. The number of legally owned civilian automatic weapons used in crimes in the US is zero, or a rounding error of it. That is to say, semi-autos are perfectly fine for murdering lots of people, and need to be severely restricted, whether or not they are assault rifles or assault weapons.

Hah... and let the cops be the only people with assault weapons?

Of course, the judge was very much in Kyle's corner in this case, which should be considered bias and in theory there are legal ways to address this but as Kaelik noted that never happens. So even if they do manage a guilty verdict, the judge will just give the lightest sentence possible. And even that won't matter, because in 2025 the new president will probably issue him a pardon.

For a slightly better court case, see the civil case against the Unite the Right guys (Spencer, Schoep, Cantwell etc.) for the conspiracy to commit hate crimes and murder (I wasn't aware you could have a civil suit over obviously criminal matters but I'm not a lawyer or American). They've reached the point where the defendants (two of which are pro se and thus have idiots for lawyers, but one of their actual lawyers is basically just as bad) are cross-examining each other, and trying to throw each other under the bus.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:02 pm

Hah... and let the cops be the only people with assault weapons?

Why on earth would you let cops have assault weapons! That sounds like a terrible idea?

Look, obviously Rittenhouse doesn't know how to game this and it won't have any effect. But Come the FUCK on.

The judge literally let Rittenhouse draw the numbers to decide which jurors are deliberating and which are alternates.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/k ... y/2685499/

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:02 pm

Hah... and let the cops be the only people with assault weapons?

Letting the people have guns to stop government tyranny or whatever hasn't worked terribly well in the US. But yeah, deal with the police as well.

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:26 am

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:02 pm

Hah... and let the cops be the only people with assault weapons?

Letting the people have guns to stop government tyranny or whatever hasn't worked terribly well in the US. But yeah, deal with the police as well.

It hasn't been tried, and was never tried, in the US. Indeed the US has consistently passed gun control laws to keep weapons out of the hands of those most likely to need protection from government tyranny.

Omegonthesane wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:36 pm

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 17, 2021 8:26 am

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:02 pm

Hah... and let the cops be the only people with assault weapons?

Letting the people have guns to stop government tyranny or whatever hasn't worked terribly well in the US. But yeah, deal with the police as well.

It hasn't been tried, and was never tried, in the US. Indeed the US has consistently passed gun control laws to keep weapons out of the hands of those most likely to need protection from government tyranny.

True.

acquitted on all counts.

disappointed but not surprised.jpg (84.52 KiB) Viewed 3415 times

I hope they don't send us back to Kenosha. It was nice enough last summer, but it's starting to get a little chilly up there.

yeah, nah, MGuy is right, this is going too far.

Spencer was on top of the world, then someone punched him, now he's bankrupt and almost guaranteed to lose his court case.
Rittenhouse committed multiple murders, didn't get punched, and walked.

If that isn't proof that you should always punch Nazis, I don't know what is.

That is somehow even funnier than Stahlseele's joke.

yeah, nah, MGuy is right, this is going too far.

Koumei wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 22, 2021 4:52 am

Spencer was on top of the world, then someone punched him, now he's bankrupt and almost guaranteed to lose his court case.
Rittenhouse committed multiple murders, didn't get punched, and walked.

If that isn't proof that you should always punch Nazis, I don't know what is.

Rittenhouse got hit in the head multiple times during the altercation, so I'm not sure what you are on about.

Oh, all the TGDMB nazis showed up to do victory laps. Weird we've still got two of those.

Stahlseele wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 22, 2021 9:50 am

This whole thing is extremely funny for me, looking in from the outside.
What do you get, if you follow somebody who has a semi automatic rifle on him and attack him?
You get what you deserve.
Which, in this case, meant: Hey You! *bang bang* out of the Gene-Pool! *bang*

Stahlseele defending a nazi killing people is the second least surprising person in this thread to defend a nazi, but also, there are many different variations of Rittenhouse apologia, but certainly the dumbest one of all is this one:

"When an active shooter murders someone, you should definitely respond by uh..... just assuming he's harmless because he's moved 10ft. After all the range on an assault rifle is certainly not enough to be able to shoot you from 10ft away!"

If an active shooter just killed someone in front of you then started moving away, just in general, probably don't assume that if you just let them get some clear space around them and feel safe they will stop their shooting spree.

Stahlseele wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 22, 2021 9:50 am

I also wonder how this all would have played out if Rittenhouse were black.
White on White Violence, POC most affected?
How the Media would have reported on this.
Would he be the Hero of the Neighbourhood, brother in Arms of BLM because he shot at 3 white men, or would be be called a traitor and Uncle Tom?
Would the media have reported on it at all?

If he were black he would have been arrested or shot dead by the police or the other nazi militia he hung out with when he was hanging out on the "police approved" side of the picket line. There's literally video evidence of some cops chatting him up while he's holding the rifle, thanking him and the other brave pro cop murder militias for coming to threaten the protestors.