Unbelievably bad witnesses for the state so far. Have they got any good ones in the pipeline?
There were some vigilantes on that street, but they weren't Kyle or his friends. They were rioters who thought their job was to rid the city of bad conservatives who had the effrontery to interfere in their drama.
So the state's argument has to be that Rittenhouse lacks "innocence" because he came into an explosive situation that would have been hunky dory if he'd just stayed home. By that standard what do we say about the 3 people who got shot (2 of them fatally) because they decided to make a powderkeg of a situation worse by rioting several nights in a row? Because one of them rushed a guy and tried to grab his rifle, another bashed an armed guy over the head with a skateboard, and a third sidled up to the armed guy and suddenly drew a pistol on him. If they'd been running from him as fast as he was running from them, all 3 would be safe and sound today. Why didn't they try to avoid an encounter; why force a confrontation? I'd say it's because none of them perceived him as a threat. They attacked him because he irritated them. They didn't like what he stood for. They didn't really, truly believe he'd defend himself, or at least they believed he'd hesitate for a fatal moment, so they could get the drop on him.
In fairness, he did show extraordinary presence of mind and accuracy under pressure for an untrained, unblooded 17-year-old. I wouldn’t have expected that from him either.
It occurs to me that the real fantasy of “My Cousin Vinnie” turns out to be that the state would volunteer to dismiss all charges when defeated on the stand.
"In fairness, he did show extraordinary presence of mind and accuracy under pressure for an untrained, unblooded 17-year-old. I wouldn’t have expected that from him either."
I used to think courtroom dramas were ridiculous, the way witnesses would break down under pressure until they were basically confessing right in front of the jury. In my experience, lying witnesses double down on their lies until they become incoherent. I've never seen one experience a moment of clarity and admit he's been lying all along.
The medical examiner is testifying now. The defense says Rosenbaum was lunging for the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle when he was shot and killed. The state first argued he was "shot in the back," then that he was several feet away and nowhere near the barrel. The Daily Caller reporter clearly said he was lunging for the barrel yelling "F*** you." No one ever thought to test the barrel for DNA.
Today the medical examiner says there is not only gunpowder stippling on Rosenbaum's hand wound, which would indicate he was within 4 feet, but also soot, which would indicate 1 foot. The ME thinks the shot through the hand may have continued through the hip. Rosenbaum was lunging downward for the rifle, which was aimed at the ground at 45 degrees at the time, then fell either because he was lunging or more directly because his hip was shattered. The four shots happened rapidly, in under one second. One of them grazed Rosenbaum's head, but one went through his thorax from back to front, presumably after he was on or nearly on the ground face down basically at Rittenhouse's feet. This is the "he shot him in the back" evidence.
The state is trying to get the ME to say that being shot at close range by a rifle could give the deceased a burst of forward momentum toward the shooter. The ME is having none of it. He agrees that 4 shots in under a second struck a body that was already flying toward the shooter. The position of the hand suggests the deceased was flying toward the shooter in "Superman" posture.
If the defense made a directed verdict motion, it was not mentioned in open court. Branca at Legal Insurrection speculates that this routine motion, rarely omitted, may have been made in writing and rejected in writing, but who knows? In any case, the defense began putting on its case today.
The first witness was a former employee of the car store, who calmly demolished the story of the two car store owners that they had no idea why all these armed guys had been protecting their property and hadn't given any permission or keys, let along asked for their help. Nick Smith (echoed later by Grandma Fiedler) matter-of-factly described how the owners had called him and, when he arrived with friends, wept with gratitude while giving him the keys, telling him where to find a ladder to get up on the roof, and encouraging him to use the store's buckets and spray washers to fight fires for the second day in a row. One of the owners helpfully stood in the group picture. Smith also testified (as did Fiedler later) how Rittenhouse stumbled back into the car store in a shattered state after shooting three men, saying "I shot someone" and "I had to do it."
Because Smith was hugely more circumstantial and detailed and believable than the zoned-out car store owners, I assume they just don't want their business burned down again. They didn't act like owners who were surprised and outraged to find that a bunch of armed yahoos claimed to have been there with their permission. They sounded blank and affectless, like "riots? What riots?" Nice way to hang their helpers out to dry. (cont'd)
Fiedler not only corroborated Nick but added lots of dirt about the horrible behavior of the deceased Rosenbaum and other rioters, one of whom pulled a gun on her, lending support to Rittenhouse's conclusion that he was in deadly danger in this out-of-control crowd. She also, as Branca noted, had a chance to show the jury what a solid citizen looks like who doesn't hesitate to protect a town from rioters, but doesn't come across as "militia" or "boogaloo." Just a grandma open-carrying a .38, too sensible to let the racist taunts of rioters upset her. She knew that it was legal to carry a firearm in defense of property, though not, in Wisconsin, to use it to exert deadly force in defense of property. She believed that an armed presence would deter looters, and she was not abashed about it. The prosecution tried to get her to say that she didn't feel personally threatened, but she explained that the behavior she witnessed was mostly at too much of a distance, and she was too surrounded by similarly armed patriots, for her to feel personally threatened. The contrast with Rittenhouse, cut off and being run down by a crowd of violent nutjobs, was obvious.
Finally, a Mr. DeBruin arrived with a pile of photographs he took that day, starting with Rittenhouse washing graffiti off a wall early in the day, and continuing with an impressive series of pictures of Rosenbaum doing things like tumping over Portapotties to make street barricades, then adding a trailer, while taking the opportunity to arm himself with the heavy trailer chain. He reported that Rosenbaum shouted "I have no problem going back go prison." He also clearly testified that Huber (the skateboard guy) was bashing Rittenhouse over the head with a skateboard when he was shot and killed, and that Grosskreutz (the survivor) was advancing on Rittenhouse with a gun pointed at him when he was shot. DeBruin also testified about someone with a gun--was it Grosskreutz?--adding that he racked the slide, which stayed back, indicated that it was loaded, if I understood correctly.
DeBruin also recounted that the prosecutor tried to get him to falsify his testimony at the conclusion of his first meeting with the team at the police station. The details are complicated, but the fact to be falsified had to do with a completely different case against one of the rioters for arson. Essentially the guy happened to be in one of DeBruin's pictures, but DeBruin couldn't identify him; the prosecutor provided an i.d. and implied that DeBruin could help out by supplementing his statement to provide the i.d. as if he had personal knowledge. The accusation of witness tampering inspired the prosecutor to start attacking DeBruin for bias and imply that he was in league with a blogger who was trying to ruin the prosecutor's reputation.
Finally, a fellow testified to authenticate a video taken by his stepdaughter as they both sat in a car parked near the car store parking lot where the first shooting (Rosenbaum) took place. You can't see anything to speak of about the shooting, but it's preceded by several minutes of absolute mayhem as rioters jump on cars in the parking lot and smash them up, with no police presence. The prosecutor tries to imply that the witness came up to Wisconsin from Texas for no good reason, maybe to cause trouble like a typical cowboy outsider, which prompted the guy to explain that Kenosha is his home town, that he cares about it, and that it's awful to see it destroyed by these disgusting social developments. He now splits his time between Texas and Wisconsin, a snowbird. His fiancee is in Kenosha.
...someone with a gun--was it Grosskreutz?--adding that he racked the slide, which stayed back, indicated that it was loaded, if I understood correctly.
Different firearms are different, but in general a pistol slide locks back if:
A) The slide lock is manually engaged, or, B) It has a magazine in it that is empty.
I don't know that the 'gun' was a pistol, though. However, the bolts of most rifles return forward if loaded. Locking back usually indicates an empty magazine, at least on common models.
I wondered about it. It's legally irrelevant whether the gun was loaded, if it was pointed at a guy who thought his life was in danger. Point an empty gun at a guy who's also armed, and he may kill you in self-defense, sorry. Goes double if you're running at him at the time in the middle of a riot.
But what the jury heard was that the gun-toter--I think it must have been Grosskreutz, the survivor with the arm-wound--was armed and dangerous, not the wide-eyed revolutionary hero who protested he'd never hurt anyone because "that's not who he is." Actually he's someone who's suing the city of Kenosha for $10MM for failing to keep him safe during his own riot after, in his own words, he'd been in the street, armed, for 75 straight days. He described his morning routine as "keys, wallet, gun."
It doesn't help that he lied to the police that he'd accidentally dropped his gun before he got to Rittenhouse--oops, video--and that he forgot to mention in his lawsuit against the city that he was pointing a gun at Rittenhouse when he was shot, as now confirmed by video and eyewitness testimony.
If the defense made a directed verdict motion, it was not mentioned in open court. ... In any case, the defense began putting on its case today.
Maybe (I'm obviously speculating here) the defense now is playing to a wider audience than the jury. A directed verdict motion, if accepted, would end the case on the spot. By actively putting on a defense, it may be that the lawyers intend to burn the prosecutors and the prosecutorial office to the ground and leave a smoking hole in their places. That would severely damage the credibility of everyone in that office for future cases. Rittenhouse also remains vulnerable to continued prosecutorial and "news" outlet persecution in Illinois; this may be also an attempt to "advise" those prosecutors, if not the outlets, about the wisdom of their pursuing a case when Rittenhouse returns.
Of course that would be a serious overreach of the defense lawyers' scope and duty to defend their client in this case and leave hypothetical future cases to the future.
...the bolts of most rifles return forward if loaded. Locking back usually indicates an empty magazine....
The rifle's bolt behavior also isn't as obvious to an outside observer as is a semi-automatic pistol's slide behavior. Perception under stress also plays a role here. If the pistol were pointed more or less directly at Rittenhouse, he might not have seen/noticed the slide locked open or even attended to that in the stress of a pistol being pointed at him at close range by someone with ill intent toward him. He likely saw the motion to work the slide; that also could have been perceived in the stress of the moment as a move to cock the pistol. It's tough to read someone else's mind....
A question of my own on directed verdicts: what's the likelihood the defense, whether or not it made a directed verdict motion at the end of the prosecution's case, would move for a directed verdict at the end of their case and before the judge instructs the jury?
I have no idea whether a DV can be reserved until after the defense's case. All I remember for sure is that a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict can be made after the verdict comes in. Or the judge can do any of these on his own motion, I think, though my knowledge is general and definitely not based on any familiarity with Wisconsin law.
And then the motion for a mistrial is on top of all that. The judge sounded as though he wanted to give the prosecution a chance to respond to it more formally, with research, despite how incandescently angry he was about the prosecutor's bad faith. Despite the bad faith, the jury didn't hear much of anything before the prosecutor was shut down and the jury was escorted out.
18 comments:
Unbelievably bad witnesses for the state so far. Have they got any good ones in the pipeline?
There were some vigilantes on that street, but they weren't Kyle or his friends. They were rioters who thought their job was to rid the city of bad conservatives who had the effrontery to interfere in their drama.
So the state's argument has to be that Rittenhouse lacks "innocence" because he came into an explosive situation that would have been hunky dory if he'd just stayed home. By that standard what do we say about the 3 people who got shot (2 of them fatally) because they decided to make a powderkeg of a situation worse by rioting several nights in a row? Because one of them rushed a guy and tried to grab his rifle, another bashed an armed guy over the head with a skateboard, and a third sidled up to the armed guy and suddenly drew a pistol on him. If they'd been running from him as fast as he was running from them, all 3 would be safe and sound today. Why didn't they try to avoid an encounter; why force a confrontation? I'd say it's because none of them perceived him as a threat. They attacked him because he irritated them. They didn't like what he stood for. They didn't really, truly believe he'd defend himself, or at least they believed he'd hesitate for a fatal moment, so they could get the drop on him.
Bad call.
In fairness, he did show extraordinary presence of mind and accuracy under pressure for an untrained, unblooded 17-year-old. I wouldn’t have expected that from him either.
It occurs to me that the real fantasy of “My Cousin Vinnie” turns out to be that the state would volunteer to dismiss all charges when defeated on the stand.
...he did show extraordinary presence of mind and accuracy under pressure for an untrained, unblooded 17-year-old.
We all tend to perform, under extreme stress, at 70% of our peaceful/peacetime training. Rittenhouse's 70% was better than their 70%. Hang him.
Eric Hines
"In fairness, he did show extraordinary presence of mind and accuracy under pressure for an untrained, unblooded 17-year-old. I wouldn’t have expected that from him either."
David...
David had been practicing all alone on lions and wolves the last few years. Highpockets didn't seem to have bothered him much.
I used to think courtroom dramas were ridiculous, the way witnesses would break down under pressure until they were basically confessing right in front of the jury. In my experience, lying witnesses double down on their lies until they become incoherent. I've never seen one experience a moment of clarity and admit he's been lying all along.
The NYT morning email describes this testimony in a single sentence as “at times lending support to Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim.”
The medical examiner is testifying now. The defense says Rosenbaum was lunging for the barrel of Rittenhouse's rifle when he was shot and killed. The state first argued he was "shot in the back," then that he was several feet away and nowhere near the barrel. The Daily Caller reporter clearly said he was lunging for the barrel yelling "F*** you." No one ever thought to test the barrel for DNA.
Today the medical examiner says there is not only gunpowder stippling on Rosenbaum's hand wound, which would indicate he was within 4 feet, but also soot, which would indicate 1 foot. The ME thinks the shot through the hand may have continued through the hip. Rosenbaum was lunging downward for the rifle, which was aimed at the ground at 45 degrees at the time, then fell either because he was lunging or more directly because his hip was shattered. The four shots happened rapidly, in under one second. One of them grazed Rosenbaum's head, but one went through his thorax from back to front, presumably after he was on or nearly on the ground face down basically at Rittenhouse's feet. This is the "he shot him in the back" evidence.
The state is trying to get the ME to say that being shot at close range by a rifle could give the deceased a burst of forward momentum toward the shooter. The ME is having none of it. He agrees that 4 shots in under a second struck a body that was already flying toward the shooter. The position of the hand suggests the deceased was flying toward the shooter in "Superman" posture.
Tex: are we at 'directed" yet?
If the defense made a directed verdict motion, it was not mentioned in open court. Branca at Legal Insurrection speculates that this routine motion, rarely omitted, may have been made in writing and rejected in writing, but who knows? In any case, the defense began putting on its case today.
The first witness was a former employee of the car store, who calmly demolished the story of the two car store owners that they had no idea why all these armed guys had been protecting their property and hadn't given any permission or keys, let along asked for their help. Nick Smith (echoed later by Grandma Fiedler) matter-of-factly described how the owners had called him and, when he arrived with friends, wept with gratitude while giving him the keys, telling him where to find a ladder to get up on the roof, and encouraging him to use the store's buckets and spray washers to fight fires for the second day in a row. One of the owners helpfully stood in the group picture. Smith also testified (as did Fiedler later) how Rittenhouse stumbled back into the car store in a shattered state after shooting three men, saying "I shot someone" and "I had to do it."
Because Smith was hugely more circumstantial and detailed and believable than the zoned-out car store owners, I assume they just don't want their business burned down again. They didn't act like owners who were surprised and outraged to find that a bunch of armed yahoos claimed to have been there with their permission. They sounded blank and affectless, like "riots? What riots?" Nice way to hang their helpers out to dry. (cont'd)
Fiedler not only corroborated Nick but added lots of dirt about the horrible behavior of the deceased Rosenbaum and other rioters, one of whom pulled a gun on her, lending support to Rittenhouse's conclusion that he was in deadly danger in this out-of-control crowd. She also, as Branca noted, had a chance to show the jury what a solid citizen looks like who doesn't hesitate to protect a town from rioters, but doesn't come across as "militia" or "boogaloo." Just a grandma open-carrying a .38, too sensible to let the racist taunts of rioters upset her. She knew that it was legal to carry a firearm in defense of property, though not, in Wisconsin, to use it to exert deadly force in defense of property. She believed that an armed presence would deter looters, and she was not abashed about it. The prosecution tried to get her to say that she didn't feel personally threatened, but she explained that the behavior she witnessed was mostly at too much of a distance, and she was too surrounded by similarly armed patriots, for her to feel personally threatened. The contrast with Rittenhouse, cut off and being run down by a crowd of violent nutjobs, was obvious.
Finally, a Mr. DeBruin arrived with a pile of photographs he took that day, starting with Rittenhouse washing graffiti off a wall early in the day, and continuing with an impressive series of pictures of Rosenbaum doing things like tumping over Portapotties to make street barricades, then adding a trailer, while taking the opportunity to arm himself with the heavy trailer chain. He reported that Rosenbaum shouted "I have no problem going back go prison." He also clearly testified that Huber (the skateboard guy) was bashing Rittenhouse over the head with a skateboard when he was shot and killed, and that Grosskreutz (the survivor) was advancing on Rittenhouse with a gun pointed at him when he was shot. DeBruin also testified about someone with a gun--was it Grosskreutz?--adding that he racked the slide, which stayed back, indicated that it was loaded, if I understood correctly.
DeBruin also recounted that the prosecutor tried to get him to falsify his testimony at the conclusion of his first meeting with the team at the police station. The details are complicated, but the fact to be falsified had to do with a completely different case against one of the rioters for arson. Essentially the guy happened to be in one of DeBruin's pictures, but DeBruin couldn't identify him; the prosecutor provided an i.d. and implied that DeBruin could help out by supplementing his statement to provide the i.d. as if he had personal knowledge. The accusation of witness tampering inspired the prosecutor to start attacking DeBruin for bias and imply that he was in league with a blogger who was trying to ruin the prosecutor's reputation.
Finally, a fellow testified to authenticate a video taken by his stepdaughter as they both sat in a car parked near the car store parking lot where the first shooting (Rosenbaum) took place. You can't see anything to speak of about the shooting, but it's preceded by several minutes of absolute mayhem as rioters jump on cars in the parking lot and smash them up, with no police presence. The prosecutor tries to imply that the witness came up to Wisconsin from Texas for no good reason, maybe to cause trouble like a typical cowboy outsider, which prompted the guy to explain that Kenosha is his home town, that he cares about it, and that it's awful to see it destroyed by these disgusting social developments. He now splits his time between Texas and Wisconsin, a snowbird. His fiancee is in Kenosha.
Once more, not a good day for the state.
...someone with a gun--was it Grosskreutz?--adding that he racked the slide, which stayed back, indicated that it was loaded, if I understood correctly.
Different firearms are different, but in general a pistol slide locks back if:
A) The slide lock is manually engaged, or,
B) It has a magazine in it that is empty.
I don't know that the 'gun' was a pistol, though. However, the bolts of most rifles return forward if loaded. Locking back usually indicates an empty magazine, at least on common models.
I wondered about it. It's legally irrelevant whether the gun was loaded, if it was pointed at a guy who thought his life was in danger. Point an empty gun at a guy who's also armed, and he may kill you in self-defense, sorry. Goes double if you're running at him at the time in the middle of a riot.
But what the jury heard was that the gun-toter--I think it must have been Grosskreutz, the survivor with the arm-wound--was armed and dangerous, not the wide-eyed revolutionary hero who protested he'd never hurt anyone because "that's not who he is." Actually he's someone who's suing the city of Kenosha for $10MM for failing to keep him safe during his own riot after, in his own words, he'd been in the street, armed, for 75 straight days. He described his morning routine as "keys, wallet, gun."
It doesn't help that he lied to the police that he'd accidentally dropped his gun before he got to Rittenhouse--oops, video--and that he forgot to mention in his lawsuit against the city that he was pointing a gun at Rittenhouse when he was shot, as now confirmed by video and eyewitness testimony.
If the defense made a directed verdict motion, it was not mentioned in open court. ... In any case, the defense began putting on its case today.
Maybe (I'm obviously speculating here) the defense now is playing to a wider audience than the jury. A directed verdict motion, if accepted, would end the case on the spot. By actively putting on a defense, it may be that the lawyers intend to burn the prosecutors and the prosecutorial office to the ground and leave a smoking hole in their places. That would severely damage the credibility of everyone in that office for future cases. Rittenhouse also remains vulnerable to continued prosecutorial and "news" outlet persecution in Illinois; this may be also an attempt to "advise" those prosecutors, if not the outlets, about the wisdom of their pursuing a case when Rittenhouse returns.
Of course that would be a serious overreach of the defense lawyers' scope and duty to defend their client in this case and leave hypothetical future cases to the future.
...the bolts of most rifles return forward if loaded. Locking back usually indicates an empty magazine....
The rifle's bolt behavior also isn't as obvious to an outside observer as is a semi-automatic pistol's slide behavior. Perception under stress also plays a role here. If the pistol were pointed more or less directly at Rittenhouse, he might not have seen/noticed the slide locked open or even attended to that in the stress of a pistol being pointed at him at close range by someone with ill intent toward him. He likely saw the motion to work the slide; that also could have been perceived in the stress of the moment as a move to cock the pistol. It's tough to read someone else's mind....
Eric Hines
A question of my own on directed verdicts: what's the likelihood the defense, whether or not it made a directed verdict motion at the end of the prosecution's case, would move for a directed verdict at the end of their case and before the judge instructs the jury?
Eric Hines
I have no idea whether a DV can be reserved until after the defense's case. All I remember for sure is that a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict can be made after the verdict comes in. Or the judge can do any of these on his own motion, I think, though my knowledge is general and definitely not based on any familiarity with Wisconsin law.
And then the motion for a mistrial is on top of all that. The judge sounded as though he wanted to give the prosecution a chance to respond to it more formally, with research, despite how incandescently angry he was about the prosecutor's bad faith. Despite the bad faith, the jury didn't hear much of anything before the prosecutor was shut down and the jury was escorted out.
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