Be darned if I know any more what's going on in the Rittenhouse case. There was an oral motion last week for a mistrial with prejudice to refiling, but no ruling and no further discussion during the arguments on Friday or Monday. Suddenly today a written motion shows up, adding an explosive new claim: that the prosecution withheld its HD version of some crucial FBI drone video and supplied the defense, the court, and the jury only with the blurry low-res version. This post contains the HD version.
It's still not easy to see what happened, and the clearer video certainly doesn't support the prosecution's argument that Rittenhouse twisted around in a bizarre fashion for an instant to point his rifle at the Zimisky couple just before the final, fatal portion of the chase began. Nevertheless, I hope the judge will react very forcefully indeed if he believes that the prosecution deliberately showed the jury a blurry version, particularly after all the nonsense about having its expert blow up a blobby portion of it to make its weird "provocation" argument. It was bad enough that the video showed up on the eve of trial as it is.
It seems the judge has suggested he's going to hold off on ruling on the mistrial motion until the jury renders a verdict. The speculation, which I think is reasonable, is that he doesn't want to take the decision from the jury as long as it's possible they'll acquit. A jury acquittal would be better for the country than a judicial interference--unless it's a conviction or even hung jury procured by prosecutorial fraud. Since the defense has done no wrong, there's no problem with this unequal treatment.
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I wish I could find a site again--one fellow had put together as much footage as he could find on the web, and worked up a detailed timeline showing what was known and not known. He would drew attention to clothing in one clip to help identify the same person in another clip taken in poorer light. One of the clips showed Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse into a bunch of cars. You couldn't see what happened next, but Rosenbaum's intent was clearly malign and it looked like a place you'd get stuck in. The drone verifies that.
The site also had "footage" of Rosenbaum together with other rioters--and even among friendlies he was clearly disturbed.
I have a bad feeling about the jury delay.
I think Rittenhouse was a bit naive, and missed the class on not getting separated from your buddies in the middle of hostiles, but on the basis of what I've seen I don't think I could convict him of anything worse than littering. (Compared to the mayor and our governor he's a paladin.) Maybe the jury saw something I didn't--I wasn't keeping track.
It's hard to guess which way they're going to go. Ace at the HQ noted that the OJ jury wanted to review the testimony of the chauffer just before they voted to acquit. Evidently they wanted to find a reason to discount it because it generally supported that OJ didn't answer the door because he was cleaning up.
The provocation argument scares me some. A lot of people want to consider Rittenhouse's mere presence with a firearm that night as provocation. The prosecution might have given jurors inclined that way enough of a hook to hang that on at least with respect to the Rosenbaum encounter, though I think there are some mitigations there. The Huber and Grosskreutz encounters are more clear-cut self-defense from an attack. Some jurors are reported to be worried about possible retaliation, though from reports it's not clear if they are worried about pro- or anti-Rittenhouse groups, or both.
I don't think the jury is worried about pro Rittenhouse groups. They're NOT the group that has pre-positioned pallets of bricks strategically placed around the city on street corners.
I personally wouldn't purposely go into a situation where I was alone amongst a bunch of hostile people. But if I had to, you can bet your ass I'd have been armed with my pistol.
Two years ago when the George Floyd riots were starting, we had a crew in Minneapolis boarding up windows at CVS stores. (We were a preferred contractor remodeling and expanding retail and pharmaceutical spaces.)
At the time, me and my crew were working on a CVS store in N Charleston SC. I drove through the "riot route" a couple of times and nearly every store front was boarded up. But red state in the south, the "peaceful protestors" were peaceful because there was some form of law enforcement on every street corner all along the route.
The closest thing to a riot we had was a homeless woman left a backpack against the back of the store I was working on and the manager called it in. We had to evacuate the building for a couple of hours while they called in the bomb squad and fire department. Thankfully, it was a non event. But it did get a little sporty for a while.
“… you can bet your ass I'd have been armed with my pistol.”
That’s part of the issue. Kyle was too young to carry a pistol, which he could conceal. The law only permitted him a rifle or shotgun.
I continue to encounter everywhere the argument:
(1) No one feels comfortable with the idea that Rittenhouse was there at all that night in the first place.
(2) ??? [abrupt shift in attitude from "he's too young, poor baby" to "try him as an adult"]
(3) Lock him in a cell for the rest of his life, if only pour encourager les autres.
Rittenhouse went into the situation with an older more experienced man, and they got separated. Robert Barnes believes that Rittenhouse was targeted by a bigger group that included those shot, and that their intention was to disarm, beat, and possibly kill Rittenhouse - similar to the organized, coordinated 'boxing-in' approach used by Antifa last year when a Proud Boy was shot and killed, in Seattle. I don't think it's just opinion, but additional evidence that he has access to.
I'm rapidly losing faith in the judge, who started out with pretty high marks for his responses and backbone but his failure to call out the prosecution for their long list of egregious offenses, and his backing away from calling a mistrial, is disturbing. Barnes isn't surprised though - and he has some great insights on the demographic in the region, the social hierarchy of the immigrant classes that make up the population there.
I can see what you're saying, Aggie, though in his defense he did eventually dismiss the firearm possession charge. I think he wants to give the jury a full opportunity to do the right thing, and he's not going to declare a mistrial unless they can't reach a verdict or show that they incorrectly applied the law to the facts.
True - But in this, the judge really had no other choice. The firearm was not a short-barreled one, and Rittenhouse is of age. There was, quite literally, nothing that could support the charge. I would even say, this was another in the list of egregious offenses committed by the State, just filing this charge, kitchen-sink style, as ballast. If you were watching the courtroom cam at the time, the judge asked these two questions and the prosecution simply answered yes, and that was that: Dismissed as an administrative matter.
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