Home » The Rittenhouse jury instructions: provocation included

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The Rittenhouse jury instructions: provocation included — 32 Comments

  1. At a certain point people like you and people like me have to do the right thing. One example is if we are on a jury, we would need to rise above fear for ourselves.

  2. The Prosecution is putting up a front that they actually have a criminal act to present.

    As I recall, Kyle was with friends until he was cut-off and isolated by police action. Are the police guilty of conspiracy or incompetence?

    The “provocation” charge is more garbage. According to that theory, if someone breaks into my home, and sees that I am armed and attacks, then the consequences are MY fault. I don’t think so.

    The one thing that the video and pictures showed was that there were no police in the area. Incompetence? Conspiracy? If the police withdraw leaving the residents to fend for themselves, the Authorities can hardly complain about the outcome. The burned out buildings and cars make it clear that things were NOT peaceful.

    I hope that the jury realizes that a guilty verdict sets them and their families up for the next riot and has the courage to vote “Not Guilty”. Having a Democratic Governor call out the Guard, clearly means that another “demonstration” is/was in the works. And all because they voted their conscience and swung to Trump instead of the Democratic figurehead. Hey! Elections have consequences……. just like jury decisions.

  3. “The judge is allowing more lesser includeds so as to increase the likelihood of a guilty verdict inorder to reduce the “risk” of a second trial.”

    This confirms for me that the judge has caved to the pressure.

    I now expect the jury will find Rittenhouse guilty of at least the lesser charge(s). I do not expect an appeal to succeed.

    If so, the rule of law in America is dead and Civil War now inescapable without surrender to tyranny. Those who surrender demonstrate their unfitness for liberty. Go and “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams

  4. Grosskreutz can’t wait for the verdict for fear of acquittal – has to get the narrative embedded in the Democrat media watchers’ heads.

    https://notthebee.com/article/the-news-media-doesnt-want-you-to-know-how-bad-the-testimony-for-the-prosecution-was-in-the-rittenhouse-case-so-they-invited-the-witness-on-to-change-his-testimony

    On another thread, Richard Aubrey mentioned another case of self-defense that ended in acquittal.
    https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/11/12/rittenhouse-and-the-right-to-self-defense/#comment-2588702

    I had to look up the defendant, Roderick Scott, because I hadn’t heard his name before.
    This post had a good article supporting Scott, and the details of his case are not really important.
    What grabbed my attention were the comments comparing his situation to George Zimmerman’s, and how many of them continued to parrot the media narratives despite Zimmerman’s acquittal.
    The author must have had his reply on boilerplate for cut-and-paste, he had to deploy it so often.

    This is not a fight for legal justice; it is a fight to control the minds of the public and make sure they have only the approved version to remember.
    http://themartialist.net/roderick-scott-trial-whats-wrong-with-new-york/

  5. The capture of the drone footage, according to the prosecution, shows Rittenhouse supposedly raising his AR at Ziminsky. As Andrew Branca says, maybe you can see that. I cannot. I can’t either. If Kyle was there to kill, he had a target rich environment, but only fired at those who attacked him.

  6. Aesopfan.
    You don’t mention it, but Scott was black and the guy he killed was white.
    Scott left a place of safety and put himself in a position where he had to shoot someone, unnecessarily, and over a property matter. Major, major no-no in citizen carry.
    Also, NY is a Duty to Retreat state. Failure to retreat is itself and solely sufficient to make one guilty. Scott did not retreat. He didn’t even maintain his position. He went looking for trouble. I can’t emphasize this enough: Even staying where you are (stand your ground) makes you culpable. Scott went out of his way.
    But Scott, not being half hispanic and blacker than Homer Plessey–‘scuse me, I mean not white–and the dead guy not being black, it was not murder most foul.
    It’s sort of like running the same experiment but only varying the variable you’re concerned with.

  7. I am unable to predict where this case will wind up, but regardless of the verdict it won’t be any place good. One outcome will convince many of the ceaseless perversion of justice by The Left; another outcome will convince many of the unbridled power of The Right.

    Had “government,” and “media” performed their proper tasks over a year ago we would not be where we are now; having confirmed the extreme distrust both have rightfully earned, I fear the future will be in the hands of neither entity shortly.

  8. At least Obama only said Trayvon Martin might have been his son;

    Which was absurd. Trayvon Martin was the issue of a long-haul trucker and a school district bureaucrat. He spent the bulk of his upbringing in the home of his father and his father’s 2d wife. His father’s 2d wife’s occupation was never stated, but her speech patterns suggested wage-earning office employee. His father’s 3d wife owned a suburban townhouse in a neighborhood occupied by common-and-garden middle class people.

    His family life was mix-and-match as those of black kids typically are. His mother lived with his older brother, the issue of a tryst which antedated her marriage; the older brother is an articulate sort who earned a computer science degree. He was under the supervision of his step-mother, his paternal uncle, and the uncle’s wife when his father was out of town. The paternal uncle was retired military. He had a paternal-side cousin who was closer to him than was his brother. Not-ideal-but-you-can-work-with-it situation until his father elected to blow up his marriage in 2011. He had behavioral problems, a matter which distressed both parents. He was in Orlando at his father’s fiancee’s because his mother in a rage had put him on a bus and told his father to take him for a while.

    All the people supervising him were black American in an uncomplicated way and in some obscure ways the larger world knows little of (e.g. papa being members of fraternal lodges) Father and uncle grew up in East St. Louis in the most viperous slum in America, and built satisfactory lives for themselves. The Obama girls never lived this life.

  9. “regardless of the verdict it won’t be any place good. One outcome will convince many of the ceaseless perversion of justice by The Left; another outcome will convince many of the unbridled power of The Right.” Constantine

    To equate a fact based, logically consistent conclusion that the Left is committed to a ceaseless perversion of justice with an ignorant, deluded conclusion is logically untenable.

    The Left has descended into an utter rejection of objective reality. The Left’s leadership knows full well of that which reality consists. It advances their agenda of seizing absolute power to pretend otherwise.

  10. All my hopes are for Rittenhouse’s acquittal.

    There is a despairing tone in most of the above comments. The appropriate emotion in this case is anger.

    Virginia got angry with the school boards and the pipsqueak Merrick Garland. The result was an unexpected and exultant victory for justice.

    It’s time to get angry Neo. Sorrow is not the emotion to carry into this ongoing war.

  11. It all comes down to a reasonable jury. Often, I’m disappointed at how many people on the right detest jury service, yet then complain about jury decisions.

    If I was on this jury, the video would be meaningless to me. As another noted, I can’t even tell from the video who is who without bringing together multiple angles, matching time, and annotation. The one video that is clear is the shooting of Huber, Kyle, and Grosskreutz, which shows Rittenhouse on the ground with three attackers. How this was ever considered first degree murder with intent is beyond me.

    The unfortunate part to me is the bigger context missing from the trial. It’s there, but it isn’t with the jury instructions. We have a riot that was allowed by politicians. As AesopFan’s NottheBee links notes, the rioters were acting as vigilante’s for the shooting of Blake, and those rioters were making clear they were punishing the people of Kenosha , WI. The jurors are also people of Kenosha. Do they reasonably believe the action of the rioters were justified, along with those of the politicians to withdraw police, so that if anybody deems to not stand-by and do nothing, then they chose to be a provocateur and can no longer claim self-defense?

  12. I’m expecting hung jury on most if not all counts. There will be some jurors who believe that KR had no business being where he was with a weapon, and therefore anything bad that happens after was his fault.
    There were some that will follow the law, and vote to acquit.
    I imagine the jury deliberations to be a Thanksgiving dinner of an extended family, half progressive and half patriotic, with all the arguments, and no turkey.

    Second most likely outcome is conviction on some of the less serious charges, with jail term of 3-5 years. The Wisconsin electorate gets red-pilled, and the next (R) governor issues a full pardon. A smart pol might make that part of his campaign- ads showing the burning and the chaos, the cops standing aside, maybe maybe a few headshots and quotes of UW professors.

  13. I wish I was as optimistic as WTIC. The model for this trial is the Chauvin trial. No change of venue, jury intimidation, a more sympathetic defendant here. Maybe less bullying prosecutors. He will be very lucky to get off with the lesser charge. The facts matter less in these political trials. The only thing he has going for him is that none of the men killed were black.

  14. Jury is in a no-win situation as they already have been threatened if they should acquit. Legal experts: can a judge set aside a guilty verdict?

  15. “provocation” could be anything the prosecutor says it is. It’s one of those things you just know. Actual evidence is unnecessary.
    Could certainly be used, as here, to do a 180 in the logical progression of the trial.

    “He shouldn’t have dissed the guy.”

  16. T-Rex,

    Jury is in a no-win situation IF they place safety above integrity.

    “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke.

  17. LeClerc:

    I have no idea why you assume I’m not angry.

    I’ve been angry for a long time about the way this country is going. Anger and sadness can coexist, you know. I don’t tend to rant and rave in my posts; that’s not my style.

  18. I’m reading a lot of anger here and elsewhere about the lesser included charges, and the possible motive for agreeing to them as a way of making a hung jury and a second trial less likely. The defendant has the right to refuse, even if his counsel strongly urge him that this is a good risk trade-off. That’s why the judge explained the trade-off again and asked the defendant to come clean if he had any doubts at all. A rational defendant can decide he’d rather give the jury a lesser charge to compromise with, instead of insisting on an all-or-nothing choice between acquittal and life in prison, or a new and even more punishing trial if the jury can’t agree.

  19. Wendy Laubach:

    Yes, Rittenhouse could have said “no.” The problem, though, is that although such a decision is rational in light of the fact that for example one of the original charges against him carries a mandatory life sentence, in fact the extra charges do have a terrible effect in terms of giving the jury an out to convict him of something. When I was reading about this, I read (don’t remember where) that ordinarily it’s the defense that wants to add new intermediate charges. The article seemed to be indicating that it’s never the prosecution, although I don’t know whether that’s true. At any rate, this time it was the prosecution trying to add the charges – apparently, anyway.

    It’s hard to get good information on this, at least so far.

  20. Because I am a logical person, I cannot imagine finding provocation in a very indistinct video, when all other evidence supports self defense.

    Where did the prosecution get this FBI video? Why was it suddenly available, in the middle of a trial in which the prosecution was spectacularly failing to disprove self defense? Something stinks here, perhaps.

  21. I agree the lesser included charges have a terrible effect in terms of giving the jury an out to convict of something. That’s why it’s an agonizing choice for the defendant. I guess I’m less sure it would be good for the defendant to take the agonizing choice away. I’d rather see a simple acquittal in this case, but I’m not the one facing the risk of a life sentence. There’s no safety net here, until Wisconsin rises up, elects a better governor, and persuades him to grant a pardon.

  22. Wendy Laubach:

    It depends who asks for the lesser charges, doesn’t it? I don’t think the prosecution should be allowed to ask, after the trial is over and it realizes it’s made a weak case for the greater charges. I think only the defense should be allowed to ask. In this case, I don’t think this was the defense’s request.

    As I said, though, it’s a bit unclear, but I think that’s the way it went down.

  23. Couple of thoughts: The uncertain meaning of the gun charge statute might allow the jury to convict and the judge to set aside. Is that technically possible? Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

    Would putting out an arsonist’s fire be “provocation”? Ten to one, should the situation arise.

  24. I think I saw a report that the judge intends to instruct the jury on that gun charge, to the effect that Kyle, at age 17, without a sawed-off long gun, was not covered by the law.

  25. Jonathan Turley seems to think that the prosecution shot itself in the foot when it rushed to charge Rittenhouse with first-degree only three days after the shootings. He says, based on the evidence, that they grossly overcharged, and that juries tend to start with the most serious charges and work their way down. If there’s no credibility on the worst charges, juries tend to discount lesser charges as well.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/581411-rittenhouse-trial-perils-of-weighing-public-opinion-over-evidence

  26. Kate. I was wondering if the jury decided to convict of “something”, an idea some observers think happens in complicated cases, to make a point or get away with acquitting on other charges. Then, that disappears, too.

  27. Richard Aubrey, I guess we’ll see this coming week. This jury is from Kenosha. They remember their city burning, and this isn’t Madison or Minneapolis.

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