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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35989 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The Rittenhouse case got many orders of magnitude more coverage and had an order of magnitude fewer victims.

Indeed--there was only one victim, and he didn't even die!

One fascinating aspect of the sovereign citizen "movement" is that, while it is certainly fringe, it's wildly all over place in terms of "nearest point of more mainstream thought." You get people that would otherwise be considered extreme libertarians, extreme leftists, extreme traditionalists, whatever, that have all decided to pick up this particular collection of unusual beliefs. One example is the Moorish sovereign citizens, if you prefer the black-separatist flavor.

Am I misremembering or are you speaking figuratively? Didn't Rittenhouse kill 2 and wound one?

I would venture that he's denying victim status to the two people Rittenhouse killed and the third he wounded - Rittenhouse being the victim. From the conservative perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.

From the conservative perspective

Well, also from the jury's own unanimous perspective, and therefore from the perspective of the criminal justice system.

Let's not overstate what a jury verdict means. The jury was instructed that "The burden is on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act lawfully in self defense. And, you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt from all the evidence in the case that the circumstances of the defendant's conduct showed utter disregard for human life."

It is standard that the state has the burden of proving that a defendant did NOT act in self-defense. So, any acquittal on self-defense grounds says little about what the jury thought of the defendant, and certainly is not an indication that they decided that he was the "real victim" nor that the decedent was the "real bad guy." And, it is certainly possible for both sides to be acting in reasonable self-defense; had Rittenhouse been killed by one of those whom he shot, his killer probably also would have been acquitted. But that would not mean that the jury decided that that killer was the "real victim" and that Rittenhouse was in the wrong.

So, any acquittal on self-defense grounds says little about what the jury thought of the defendant, and certainly is not an indication that they decided that he was the "real victim" nor that the decedent was the "real bad guy."

The post to which you're replying was quoting a part that was referring to:

they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.

Which is different from any statement about who's a "real victim" or the "real bad guy." Given that the jury decided that the prosecutors were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse did not act in self defense, it seems reasonable to conclude that all the evidence they saw led them to conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.

seems reasonable to conclude that all the evidence they saw led them to conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon

No, it is not reasonable to infer that, because that turns the burden of proof around and places it on the defendant. If, for the sake of argument, "beyond a reasonable doubt" means 95% sure, you are saying that the verdict implies that the jury was 95 pct sure that Rittenhouse's actions were a reasonable response to aggressors, when in fact all it means is that they were more than 6 pct sure.

That's a fair point, and I was erroneous when I wrote "beyond a reasonable doubt" there. Rather, what I should have written was that the evidence led the jury to conclude that, by the criminal justice system's standards, Rittenhouse's actions were a response against aggressors by someone holding a loaded weapon.

Well, again, all one can infer is that the jury was not convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his actions were NOT reasonable. It is irrelevant whether they actually posed a threat; all that is relevant is whether Rittenhouse believed that they posed a threat and whether belief was reasonable, not whether it was true. As the jury was instructed, "The reasonableness of the defendant's beliefs must be determined from the standpoint of the defendant at the time of the defendant's acts and not from the viewpoint of the jury now."

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