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Terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted on all counts


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9 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

 

Not sure I agree that's the case; I'd have to assume that the proper charges were sought in the first place, which I don't. 


Wisconsin is a lesser included charges state, and the jury was allowed to consider such. What particular charges should they have explicitly gone for that we supported by the facts?

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I'm not a lawyer, but crucially neither are you.

 

I don't need to be a lawyer, though, to observe what happened and understand that a conviction would have relied on demonstrating and proving that he created the danger that he claimed to be fleeing from. At best this prosecution just kind of left it for the jury to assume. 

 

I also don't need to be a lawyer to recognize that asking a question that opens the door to overturning one of your more important court rulings is such a rookie mistake as to strain credulity. 

 

I also don't need to be a lawyer to point out that, again, since I'm skeptical of the proficiency and drive of the prosecution here .. asking about details that assume competence (re: lesser charges) isn't going lead to a discussion that's strictly possible. 

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3 hours ago, Anathema- said:

I'm not a lawyer, but crucially neither are you.

 

I don't need to be a lawyer, though, to observe what happened and understand that a conviction would have relied on demonstrating and proving that he created the danger that he claimed to be fleeing from. At best this prosecution just kind of left it for the jury to assume. 

 

I also don't need to be a lawyer to recognize that asking a question that opens the door to overturning one of your more important court rulings is such a rookie mistake as to strain credulity. 

 

I also don't need to be a lawyer to point out that, again, since I'm skeptical of the proficiency and drive of the prosecution here .. asking about details that assume competence (re: lesser charges) isn't going lead to a discussion that's strictly possible. 

 

Are we now only allowed to have discussions of things in which we have credentialed expertise? There would be like seven posts on this board if we are going to start gatekeeping discussions in such a way :p 
 

Anyway, have you read something that gave an example of different charges that could have been brought? If so I would be interested to read it.

 

I actually spent the last couple of hours reading Wisconsin legal statutes on homicides and following a bunch of the footnotes. Interesting case law to aid in explaining some of the exceptions and issues of affirmative defenses. Some of it was illuminating as to what modifiers like “reckless” mean in the legal context. Not exactly the most exciting content for most people though 😂

 

DOCS.LEGIS.WISCONSIN.GOV

 

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6 hours ago, Anathema- said:

I'm skeptical of the proficiency and drive of the prosecution here

its not just here but the state capacity to run tough cases to completion is lacking. basically if they can't scare some poor kid with life in jail so that they plead down to a lesser charge, I'm not sure the state (at any level here) has the ability or wherewithal to do so!

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9 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

its not just here but the state capacity to run tough cases to completion is lacking. basically if they can't scare some poor kid with life in jail so that they plead down to a lesser charge, I'm not sure the state (at any level here) has the ability or wherewithal to do so!

 

Or rely on racism to drive their implications home. 

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49 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

its not just here but the state capacity to run tough cases to completion is lacking. basically if they can't scare some poor kid with life in jail so that they plead down to a lesser charge, I'm not sure the state (at any level here) has the ability or wherewithal to do so!


I think people often view criminal prosecutions through the lens of TV and movies where DAs and there teams are the smartest people in the room. The reality is so far from that, especially in low budget municipalities. I have had the displeasure of sitting through the trials of several friends or their spouses and it is shocking how poorly argued most of the trials were. 
 

There are also structural hurdles that make prosecutions more difficult, and I believe they should be there. As an example, rules on evidence are stacked against the state.

 

Making criminal law is itself a very difficult task. It can be tough to craft laws in a way that achieve the desired goal without unintended consequences. I don’t envy those who are tasked with doing so.

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1 hour ago, sblfilms said:


 

There are also structural hurdles that make prosecutions more difficult, and I believe they should be there. As an example, rules on evidence are stacked against the state.

 

I feel like that's something that gets missed by a lot of people. Like, do I feel like Rittenhouse kind of got off on a technicality (at least in terms of a charge like negligent homicide, not necessarily murder)? Yeah. Do I think the trial would have absolutely gone differently if he had a higher melanin content? Definitely, but that's a different discussion. But there's a reason those technicalities are there. It's SUPPOSED to be very, very hard to convict someone of a felony. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" by definition means that if there is any reasonable doubt, they are innocent.

 

And sometimes that means people who are absolute pieces of shit get off scott-free. But that's better than having it the other way around.

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1 hour ago, sblfilms said:


I think people often view criminal prosecutions through the lens of TV and movies where DAs and there teams are the smartest people in the room. The reality is so far from that, especially in low budget municipalities. I have had the displeasure of sitting through the trials of several friends or their spouses and it is shocking how poorly argued most of the trials were. 
 

There are also structural hurdles that make prosecutions more difficult, and I believe they should be there. As an example, rules on evidence are stacked against the state.

 

Making criminal law is itself a very difficult task. It can be tough to craft laws in a way that achieve the desired goal without unintended consequences. I don’t envy those who are tasked with doing so.

Agreed. But even in the Big Leagues at DOJ, we stopped doing anti trust a couple decades ago and now we just don't!

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On 11/20/2021 at 1:03 PM, Fizzzzle said:

I feel like that's something that gets missed by a lot of people. Like, do I feel like Rittenhouse kind of got off on a technicality (at least in terms of a charge like negligent homicide, not necessarily murder)? Yeah. Do I think the trial would have absolutely gone differently if he had a higher melanin content? Definitely, but that's a different discussion. But there's a reason those technicalities are there. It's SUPPOSED to be very, very hard to convict someone of a felony. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" by definition means that if there is any reasonable doubt, they are innocent.

 

And sometimes that means people who are absolute pieces of shit get off scott-free. But that's better than having it the other way around.

Wait a minute... if those technicalities you speak of are supposed to be there to make convictions more difficult for the prosecution than why is it a "different discussion" to talk about the fact that if Rittenhouse were black he would be buried UNDER the jail? It's all part of the same discussion. 

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5 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Wait a minute... if those technicalities you speak of are supposed to be there to make convictions more difficult for the prosecution than why is it a "different discussion" to talk about the fact that if Rittenhouse were black he would be buried UNDER the jail? It's all part of the same discussion. 

Because that's a discussion about prejudice within the judicial system from human actors, not the philosophy behind why the laws are written the way they are in the first place. The truth is a black person (or any non-white person, really) is much more likely to be seen as an aggressor in a confrontation than a white person. That's not a failing of written law, that's our failure as prejudiced dickheads, and as long as the legal system requires human mediation, it will also be at least somewhat subjected to the whims of said dickheads. But that doesn't necessarily mean that a law itself is wrong.

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1 minute ago, Fizzzzle said:

Because that's a discussion about prejudice within the judicial system from human actors, not the philosophy behind why the laws are written the way they are in the first place. The truth is a black person (or any non-white person, really) is much more likely to be seen as an aggressor in a confrontation than a white person. That's not a failing of written law, that's our failure as prejudiced dickheads, and as long as the legal system requires human mediation, it will also be at least somewhat subjected to the whims of said dickheads. But that doesn't necessarily mean that a law itself is wrong.

But the "philosophy behind the laws" is written by human actors who also have prejudices that inform those laws.  You can separate those two especially when we see those laws are not applied equally based on race, gender, and socio-economic status. The law is not moe has it ever been "color blind" and until we face those facts, we will continue to see unequal justice in this system. Chalking it up to "bad apples" isn't gonna fix it. The whole system is fucked 

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16 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

But the "philosophy behind the laws" is written by human actors who also have prejudices that inform those laws.  You can separate those two especially when we see those laws are not applied equally based on race, gender, and socio-economic status. The law is not moe has it ever been "color blind" and until we face those facts, we will continue to see unequal justice in this system. Chalking it up to "bad apples" isn't gonna fix it. The whole system is fucked 

You're right, it's not applied equally, but not because the law itself is bad.

 

"don't kill people" - understood, easily applied to everyone.

"don't kill people UNLESS you had no other choice" - well, okay then, now we're introducing bias into the equation. Who decides who had no choice?

 

The problem is systemic, but not because of how the law is written, but because we are a racist/classist society. I don't think changing the laws fixes it. The laws around homicide, self defense, negligent homicide, etc. are generally pretty easily digestible. The law isn't literally written different for POC, it's the way the law is applied/enforced to POC that's fucked. I think changing education is what fixes it. To use the apples analogy, I don't think it's "chalking it up to bad apples," I think it's understanding that we just happen to live in an apple tree.

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5 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Wait a minute... if those technicalities you speak of are supposed to be there to make convictions more difficult for the prosecution than why is it a "different discussion" to talk about the fact that if Rittenhouse were black he would be buried UNDER the jail? It's all part of the same discussion. 

 

German fascism was written into black letter law. 

 

American fascism is in the discretion. 

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2 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

 

 

For those that think the judge did anything wrong. He also did a video on the case itself.

 

 

 

 

 

I watched the second video and it is quite thorough, though I do think he’s being a little toooo neutral with how reasonable it could be that Rittenhouse didn’t act in self defense. It’s like when climate change deniers say there are scientists who disagree that the earth is warming by human behaviors. Sure, there are some, but I have yet to see a lawyer who spent any meaningful time looking at the case that concluded Rittenhouse didn’t act in legally permissible self defense.

 

But one of the best parts of the video is when he made the point that some of the people who were shot could also claim they were acting in self defense. It is indeed a weird “last man standing” thing in which two combatants in a conflict have both be using force that would be deemed self defense were they to be that last man standing.

 

This is only made worse in a country where you can’t swing a cat without hitting an armed person. 

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