That's not the standard that our legislatures have set regarding self-defense. Nor is it in keeping with our legal traditions, nor our rights as free men and women. We do not have to submit to beatings. We have the right to defend ourselves from being beaten, even with rifles if necessary. That is the law, and these prosecutors are lying scoundrels of the worst sort.
8 comments:
The prosecutors also made a big deal out of Rittenhouse's failure to satisfy his duty to yield ground and back away.
I don't know Wisconsin law on that aspect, but here in Texas, and in several other States, there is no such duty to yield ground. We, the assaultees, are completely within our rights of self defense to stand our ground; the only criterion being that we actually were established on that spot when the assault occurred.
There is this, though [emphasis added]: Wisconsin does not have a stand your ground law. Stand your ground laws in other states generally allow for a person to claim self-defense without first needing to retreat when outside their home or business. Wisconsin also does not have an affirmative duty to retreat.
Never mind that Rittenhouse plainly was not "standing his ground;" he was on the run for most of the encounter.
Eric Hines
If there were some way not to be killed while getting beaten up in a riot in which you're carrying a gun that will certainly be taken from you once you're pounded unconscious, and then used to kill you, there might actually be an argument that shooting your attacker was not "proportional" violence. How that could apply on the facts of this case, I have no idea.
What an eerie echo of the Zimmerman case.
According to Andrew Branca's analysis, while Wisconsin is substantially a castle-doctrine state, it has a limited version of duty to retreat. As part of a statute dealing with provocation with regard to self-defense, a person who is judged to have unintentionally provoked a fight has a duty to retreat and communicate in order to regain the right to self-defense. A person who is judged to have intentionally provoked a fight has no right to a self-defense argument according to WI law.
This is why the prosecution produced the 11th hour claim that a previously unknown video showed Rittenhouse gesturing with his rifle towards some of the crowd in view of Rosenbaum.
"Everyone takes a beating once in a while?"
I believe the correct reply is, "Well, then it's your turn now."
They could start a club:
https://m.hindustantimes.com/india/if-you-can-t-stop-rape-enjoy-it-says-cbi-director-ranjit-sinha-remark-sparks-outrage/story-cXCIz9ynv91K5BXviZNxVL.html
- Bewildered
Prosecutor tried to position the threats to Rittenhouse as *just a fistfight*, which couldn't have posed any serious risk to him. But mob attacks, by their nature, are different from one-on-one fights (which themselves can be deadly, of course)
See Robert Avrech's post about a riot that he and his family were involved in....great writing, as one might expect from an Emmy-Award-Winning screenwriter:
http://www.seraphicpress.com/jew-without-a-gun/
there might actually be an argument that shooting your attacker was not "proportional" violence.
What's never proportional is merely disengaging from your attacker, leaving him fully capable of attacking you again some time later, whether minutes or hours or days or months later. Or in his lifetime.
The only--only--proportional response to an attacker is to defeat him so totally he can never attack you again. That may or may not involve shooting him, but it does, of necessity, involve destroying his capability to attack.
Eric Hines
You need functional fingers, wrists, elbows, throats, ankles, and hearts to give "licks" to targets like me.
Kind of a big weak spot there.
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