The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[The Minsky Moment]

It's a debate that comes up from time to time.  Defence lawyers hate the word "victim", as it somehow assumes that a crime has been committed, when that's the purpose of the trial to determine.

Yes the issue here is the glaring double standard not the victim ruling in itself.

[garbon]

Rittenhouse

[Barrister]

Weren't most observers predicting this outcome?

[Valmy]

Yeah based on the law and evidence it was pretty clear he was not guilty. The law sure makes it easy to kill people and not commit a crime though.

[Habbaku]

Weren't most observers predicting this outcome?

Yes. Anyone paying even vague attention to the trial could tell the state was doing an awful job.

[Syt]

Any chance of this going to appeals?

[Barrister]

So I haven't been following the case directly, only from news reports.  And as a trial lawyer I know that's a terrible way to form an opinion about a case.

But the best commentary I've seen on the case from a few different sources was that Kyle Rittenhouse was a fool and an idiot for taking a rifle into that situation (and that right-wing attempts to make him a hero are disgusting) but that he was acting in self-defence.

What's most jarring for me is that Kyle Rittenhouse was a youth at the time.  In Canada there are laws prohibiting naming young offenders.

[Valmy]

Any chance of this going to appeals?

I don't think you can appeal a not guilty verdict can you?

[Habbaku]

Any chance of this going to appeals?

I don't think you can appeal a not guilty verdict can you?

We have a constitutional right that prevents that.

[Syt]

Fair enough. But civil suits could still be brought?

[Habbaku]

Sure, but what are they going to get from Rittenhouse from a civil suit? Is he loaded with something other than an AR-15?

[Sheilbh]

Sure, but what are they going to get from Rittenhouse from a civil suit? Is he loaded with something other than an AR-15?

Give him a year on the conservative grift circuit and it might be worth it.

[DGuller]

I'm just a lay person, but I think there are only two ways to get around double jeopardy.  The first way is if you can prove that the first jeopardy wasn't really a jeopardy, but a sham trial (i.e. you bribed the jurors or the judge).  The second way is that some crimes can also expose you to a federal prosecution for civil rights violations; it kind of is a cheap trick to get around double jeopardy prohibition at times, but it's also necessary to protect against situations where juries serve as accessories after the fact and nullify the victims' rights.

[Barrister]

Any chance of this going to appeals?

I don't think you can appeal a not guilty verdict can you?

I think there's some limited room to appeal if there were legal errors in the trial (such that the trial was never fair to begin with), but not on the grounds that 'the jury reached the wrong decision'.

[The Brain]

I've only seen a New York Times video on YouTube about what happened. Law enforcement didn't exactly cover themselves in glory that night.