Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of shooting three people, and killing two during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer was exonerated of all charges by a jury. Rittenhouse nearly passed out in relief.
Rittenhouse was being attacked from behind when he shot Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, as well as deceased Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26 in the riots following the police shooting of a 29-year-old Black man, Jacob Blake.
But if you are at all familiar with the law and the circumstances you would think this would be an easy victory. Rittenhouse was being chased by three men who were perceived as having the intent to kill him. Simple self defense.
But in this day and age, it is not so simple. Protests ensued outside the courthouse from anti-gun mobs. Do we not even find this unusual anymore? Mobs supporting Antifa and BLM have done a great deal of destruction in the last couple of years. They get a great deal of coverage, but none of them seem to go to jail for what they destroy. Businesses were boarded up in Kenosha.
The liberal media with its anti-gun mania garnering sympathy for the “victims” who, in actuality were the attackers. The media and political pressure to make an example of Rittenhouse were strong, the prosecutor pulled every trick in the book to convict him.
And that is my issue with this. Prosecutors have a great many tricks they can pull. One was piling on charges for carrying his AR-15. If the prosecutor had done any kind of homework, he would have known that this was not illegal. The prosecution also, despite video evidence to the contrary, attempted to portray Rittenhouse as an evil aggressor, provoking conflict (Rittenhouse was initially assaulted from behind, remember?).
The prosecutor at one point brandished the AR-15 like a terrorist, pointing it at the jury with his finger on the trigger. The judge almost declared a mistrial after the prosecutor asked the jury why Rittenhouse hired a lawyer and refused to speak to police after the incident. Does he not know that this is a basic right guaranteed by the Constitution, that you do not have to testify against yourself?
This was a political show. It could easily have ended in disaster.
This is the kind of political corruption we must fight in this country. It used to be that courts were rule by evidence. We have occasionally seen where courts were ruled by passion. This is bad enough.
This was an attempt to rule a court by MANUFACTURED passion and the threat of mob violence
Fortunately, it didn’t work.
This time.