So many wrongs
Now that constitutionally ordained, due-process justice (as opposed to unjust politically charged condemnation) has been served with the Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict, it’s time to count all the wrongs surrounding this tell-tale case.
Moreover, it’s also proper to place some inexcusable blame. This is a case that dominated media headlines for months. It wasn’t mass incompetence for high-level government officials, pundits and reporters to get easily verifiable facts so wrong (or if it was, they need to resign)—it was intentional.
This case epitomizes what happens when truth and reality get tossed because they don’t fit a predetermined narrative.
WRONGFUL PROSECUTION
“You will hear from the FBI individual who was in the plane taking that infrared video that shows the defendant chasing Mr. Rosenbaum and initiating that confrontation,” Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger told the jury in his opening statement.
Imagine the jury’s confusion when they actually saw that video in court, and others, showing the exact opposite.
Anyone with eyes who spent even the most cursory time reviewing the video evidence can plainly see who the aggressors were and who the victim was in this case.
Kyle Rittenhouse never tried to “stand his ground” with gun-nut swagger. He never pursued anyone, he continually sought to flee from confrontational situations, and every person who got shot was chasing him. Two of those shot (Joe Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber) tried to grab his rifle (never a good idea), and the third (Gaige Grosskreutz) pointed a loaded pistol at Rittenhouse.
In court, Grosskreutz (a prosecution witness) admitted that Rittenhouse didn’t fire at him until he aimed his own weapon at Rittenhouse. Indeed, video evidence clearly shows Rittenhouse trying to let Grosskreutz run away. After Huber was shot, Grosskreutz had nearly three seconds to turn and leave. Instead, after a moment of holding his hands up, he lunged aggressively, bringing his Glock to bear on Rittenhouse, who then shot him in the arm.
With indisputable video evidence, and even prosecution witnesses who supported the defendant’s version of events, this might be one of the most open-and-shut cases of self-defense in the annals of Wisconsin jurisprudence.
It’s hard to believe it ever got brought to trial in the first place. And easy to understand the not-guilty outcome.
WRONG DETAILS
It would take several columns to enumerate all the wrong particulars reported about Kyle Rittenhouse leading up to the trial. Suffice it to say that virtually anything you might have heard or read from either CNN or MSNBC was inaccurate or incorrect.
WRONG RACIALIZATION
The shooter and those killed or injured were all white. Anyone who tried to racialize this is among the sort who want to racialize everything.
This case epitomizes why racialization, not racism, is the corrosive element undermining social progress. Fanatical racialists are on the rise, while rank racism has been in decline for decades. More on that in an upcoming column.
WRONG REACTION
A proper response by the president would have been something like this: “We have a treasured trial-by-jury system, and those jurors had access to so much more evidence than I or any detached observer do that it is utterly inappropriate to pass any judgment from afar on the merits of the case. I trust our system and I trust those citizen jurors who did their civic duty for the nation.”
His initial off-the-cuff remark hinted at that sentiment. But he then did a pandering about-face in the official White House statement, saying that he was “angry and concerned,” but the jury had spoken.
If Biden believes such unbecoming comments actually gain him voter support, he’s as out of touch as Binger.
WRONG CHARACTERIZATION
Another thing the various video footage presented in this trial proved beyond the shadow of a doubt is that there wasn’t any sort of “protest” in Kenosha last Aug. 25. All there was, was criminal chaos.
And if Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz are representative in any substantive way—as random players intersecting with Rittenhouse, the latter two supposedly attempting to stop what they believed to be an “active shooter” (who wasn’t actively shooting at that point)—then a good many of the so-called protesters were actually criminals.
It’s more than a little unsettling that those three men all had lengthy records, including some distinctly unsavory offenses.
Rosenbaum was a child molester and registered sex offender felon who racked up 40 disciplinary violations during his 10 years in prison (half of them major or violent infractions).
Huber had a serious criminal history as a domestic-abuse repeat offender, including a felony conviction for strangulation and suffocation. He was also convicted of felony false imprisonment with a dangerous weapon.
Grosskreutz’s arrest record goes back to 2010, for crimes ranging from domestic abuse to criminal trespass and burglary. He was convicted of a firearm offense in 2015, and was illegally armed on Aug. 25. His last run-in with the law? He was found guilty of loitering on Nov. 3.
Chased and cornered by thugs like that, most readers would do exactly what Kyle Rittenhouse did: exercise the right of self-defense.