Illinois teen arrested in fatal shooting at Kenosha protest, police say

Actually you assume the evidence shows people were trying to kill him (you assume motive) and harm him (again assume motive). The evidence does not necessarily show that. In fact it may very well show the opposite and that he panicked and as a result shot innocent people who were no threat to him.

The problem with trials is people with strong beliefs one way or the other jump to conclusions like you. I appreciate that but the law does not jump to those conclusions. Now mind you criminal law requires the DA show beyond reasonable doubt the accused engaged in a specific crime which is a high standard but you do not have all the evidence yet.

 

You would be right. I never said defense was "unlimited". Why do you leftists always infer crap that no one ever said?

However....

• If they are throwing incendiary devices at you and charging you... shooting is valid. (#1 Criminal - Pedophile (5 boys ages 9-11) - Killed)
  
• If they are attacking you with a weapon, trying to bash your head in with it.... shooting is valid. (#2 Criminal - Assault and attempted strangulation on a woman - Killed)
• If they have drawn a gun on your and are bearing down... shooting is valid. (#3 Criminal - convicted of a crime for use of a firearm while intoxicated - Bicep Blown Off)

Rittenhouse was protecting Private Property when he was initially attacked by the Pedophile. After that, he was trying to get to the police and save his own life, which he did both, and did so very well.

 

First off I am a law professor so I am trying to help explain some things. Second I am Canadian and have no vested political interest. Third, I am not a leftist. I am apolitical in such matters trained only to explain both sides of the possible legal arguments and procedures. Fourth your cited examples of criminal law are all incorrect in assumption of application and irrelevant to how the case will be determined. Fifth, where you determined the person killed was a pedophile is unknown. Sixth even if the deceased was a pedophile and it was not you engaging in an inflammatory smeer because you are angry, it would not be relevant to the determination of this case as you are well aware. No one was shot because they were molesting a child so knock it off.

You not I are injecting your political opinions into the legal issues. All I can tell you is this case will not be decided by politics, your preconceived assumptions or the interpretation you can defend property by shooting people.

Thank you.

 

Your argument falls apart on this point: Rittenhouse didn't shoot Rosenbaum for trespassing or damaging property. He shot that child molester for chasing him and attacking him. It's a textbook case of self defense. You would have a point if Rosenbaum had just been smashing car windows in the dealership and Rittenhouse shot him for it, but that's not what happened. Rosenbaum attacked Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse fled in an attempt to disengage. Rosenbaum chased him. Then Rittenhouse was left with no option but to use force to defend himself from the child molester attacking him.

And the other two dirtbags he shot were also in the act of attacking / threatening him when shot. They're all clear-cut examples of textbook self defense.

If the DA had a brain instead of a politically-drive weathervane in his head, he would have never brought charges, because he's going to lose this case. It'll be as spectacular a failure as Angela Corey or Mike Nifong.

 

To be clear to the armchair Judges who have watched a You Tube video two events occured:

1- at the first of two sites it appears Rittenhouse was pursued by a group and a third party not Rittenhouse fired into the air;
2- it then appears a person lunged at Rittenhouse and attempted to take his rifle, at which time Rittenhouse fires at that person 4 times;
3- then at the second location, it appears Rittenhouse trips while trying to run away from 3 people rushing towards him at which time Rittenhouse fired 4 times.

If someone of you want to read into that your own agendas no one can stop you. No he was not standing at a property defending it from vandalism-he was on a street with others with rifles approaching people on the street and the people he shot at were not destroying property. The property narrative is not demonstrated by those tapes.

The motives of why people were rushing at Rittenhouse are not yet known. What could be expected is they will say he had no police uniform and they were rushing at him because they thought he was coming after them to shoot them.

If you want to go on the streets with a rifle and head towards people with a rifle, it would be foolish to think the would not react. Common sense would tell you that.

Now what their intent or his was, remains to be seen.

Some of you acting as arm chair Judges need to cool it.

 

Don't take our word for it, do your own research. Look into where Rosenbaum was "living" from 2003-2016 and why he was "staying" there. You can start here: https://corrections.az.gov/public-resources/inmate-datasearch

 

You need to slow and calm down when discussing these issues. I never argued Rittenhouse was defending property. I presented that scenario not as a fact but as an issue others raised as to what he was doing to explain the law on defence of property which does not justify shooting people. It was by the way Rittenhouse's defense lawyers who have raised his defending property as a legal defense not me and they have,

Next with your argument he shot people chasing him you selected only part of the sequence and not the entire sequence. They didn't simply chase him for no reason other than to chase him. Slow down and think what they will say. They wll say they were trying to disarm him in self defence because they had no weapons and thought he was shooting at innocent people. Think man when an event happens a jury and judge can't just select the part of the event suitable to your preconceived opinoon and ignore the rest and so no with due respect you haven't established self defence and if anything what you see might establish Rittenhouse was engaged in aggravated assault with a weapon by even approaching them in the first place. The law is not as simple as you make it. Your use of the words dirtbags and clearcut examples simply show your biases and preconceived judgement as to what happened. You see what you want to see.

I see events not yet properly analyzed legally to determine a decision of guilt or innocence to any charge because I do not have all the evidence yet.

 

Wrong. For starters, two of the three won't "say" anything. They're dead. All we have to judge their motives are the video and any other evidence available to us. And those videos dispel the myth that Rittenhouse was "coming after them". He was running away from Rosenbaum the child molester. It's on video. There's no "he was coming right for me" narrative here that's plausible. For the subsequent assaults he was sitting / laying on the ground when the other two attacked him, and he defended himself from those assaults. He wasn't "approaching" any of them. He ran away from his attackers in all three cases before finding himself unable to retreat further and resorting to self defense. The argument that you are (poorly) trying to make here: that the men who pursued / attacked Rittenhouse were acting in self defense, from the teen that was running away from them, is not plausible.

 

He died doing what he loved best, chasing young boys.

 

You again missed the point slow down. Please slow down. Think before you write. At the time of the shooting the person you call a pedophile was not molesting a child. Only if he were molesting a child at the time of the shooting and they were trying to stop the molestation would his being a pedophile be relevant. Secondly even in a case of a pedophile molesting a child, you can't shoot the person. You are to pull them off and hold them for the police. The law does not allow you to kill them,

If someone is a parent of a child being molested by a pedophile and they see it, case law has said if they kill the pedophile in the heat of the moment they can make a successful defence of temporary automatism (lack of capacity to form criminal intent).

Man you can't just walk into the street and shoot people because they are pedophiles, think why. You know I spent 20 years tracking them down and trying to get them found guilty? What do you think would happen if I took the law into my own hands and shot them? Yes I was tempted. You can't break the law because you don't like someone no matter how legitimate your feelings. You know that. Come on man I am not asking you to support or like pedophiles. I am saying the law doesn't work that way. Hey you want to tell me the law fails to put guilty people in jail and I failed you bet. I admit it. However the laws are there to protect the innocent and the same laws that got some bad person off protected an innocent person from going to jail. It aint perfect but its how it works.

 

Also, this isn't true. One had a skateboard and one had a pistol:

 

Again you need to slow down. There are indeed other witnesses. The rest is your subjective opinion. Again you only acknowledge one segment of the entire sequence to form your opinion.

 

The skateboard could be said to be used in self defence just like your arguing Rittenhouse used his rifle in self defence.

As for the person with the pistol I do not know who he was. If indeed he was a citizen and it can be shown he pointed his gun at Rittenhouse, and Rittenhouse shot back at the guy with the pistol, we have a different issue than with unarmed civilians for sure but the evidence as to who this person is and what he was doing with the gun has yet to be introduced. Can you slow down and wait for it to be introduced. Next what if that person was an undercover police officer or his hat says police? What if he only pulled the gun out after he was shot?

See you are jumping to conclusions. All I am saying is slow down man. Slow down.

 

Rittenhouse didn't shoot him because he was a pedophile. He shot the pedophile because the pedophile was attacking him. I understand that Rosenbaum's history of raping boys may not be admissible at Rittenhouse's trial, and that absent Rosenbaum's attack on Rittenhouse his shooting might not be justified, but it's still accurate to say that Rittenhouse shot a pedophile. And I'm personally grateful that the pedophile gave Rittenhouse the legal justification for shooting him by attacking Rittenhouse, and that Rittenhouse's aim was true. The world is a bit better place without Rosenbaum in it.

 

Still, we can't have immature and untrained teenagers with emotional health issues acting as vigilantes.

 

He wasn't "acting as [a] vigilante". He was there to render medical aid to the injured, and was placed in an unfortunate situation where he had to defend himself from a child molester.

 

You dont chase someone in 'self defense'. If someone is hitting you with a skateboard, that's legit SD. We know who the guy with the pistol was. Another criminal IIRC from this conversation MONTHS ago.

 

Hurricane:

See:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...enhouse-shoot-protest-jacob-blake/5675987002/

I did find a story as to the man on the skateboard, the man with the gun and what Rittenhouse said were his motives for being there on the night of the incident. They provide a different perspective than what you say.

This is why I say slow down. Jumping to judgement based on your interpretation of a picture is not how the law works.

 

Your are confusing your personal beliefs about pedophiles with the actual legal issues that will arise at trial. You keep saying Rittenhouse was attacked but ignoring what I have advised you and that is when examining the incident, the court will not only look at the attack on Rittenhouse, they will look at the actions of Rittenhouse before and after the "attack" from the civilians.

 

This thread is almost a YEAR old, most of us have seen umpteen sources as to the details of this case at this point, now you know.

 

Do you think someone hitting you with a skateboard can cause serious injury or possible death? These anarchist bring these skateboards to these events as weapons.

 

Of course he was and he was interviewed acknowledging he was. He was there to enforce the law as a civilian and that is what a vigilante is. Quite frankly the history of your country is closely associated with vigilante justice and guns. This is a continuation of behaviour that has gone on since 1776. There is no point denying what it is. Its a deeply entrenched belief by your fellow citizens that their right to bare arms gives them the right to form militias and enforce law. The problem is the belief in what a "militia" is, causes legal issues and technically a militia, or civilian force is a vigilante organization. A classic example of vigilante organizations are non profit groups set up to educate the public about specific criminal behaviour and report it to the police. Vigilanteism by itself is not the problem, it is when people try to enforce the law using physical force or weapons or violating laws to do it, it then becomes problematic. The United States Better Business Bureau is a classic example of a vigilante organization set up to protect people from unethical business practices. Because it doesn't go around shooting people it doesn't cause concern. Curtis Sliwa in New York City created a group with Red Berets to patrol neighbourhoods and protect people from gangs and drug addicts committing crimes and rapists etc. I actually met the man in Toronto when he tried to set up an organization in Toronto. He had a lot of bad press but he did not carry weapons or condone violence and neither did his organization. Please denying what vigilanteism is not germaine to this case.

 

Uhhh they shot at him before he ever fired a round.

 

I understand what you mean.

From a purely legal perspective, his level of maturity and emotional health probably will not be relevant to the determination of his guilt.

His pre-existing membership in Proud Boys and previous incidents of violence may be. The defense has a motion as to whether the latter two can be admissable evidence.

They would argue introduction of the two would inflamme the jury and be so prejudicial as to prevent such information from being considered fairly. The DA will argue they are directly relevant as they explain his motives were pre-meditated.

There is an interview of him at the scene stating his motives. He said he was there to protect property and made references that appear to say he was prepared to shoot if he had to.

That could be used to show premeditated intent to shoot as well. All of this could factor into arguments as to self defence and lowering homicide to accidental homicide (manslaughter) or criminal negligence with a weapon.

His lack of training with a rifle might be relevant as to a determination in favour of unintended murder and in a civil trial it would be used to establish he was reckless entitling the next of kin of the dead to sue him for the death of their loved ones.

The civil proceedings as to the next of kin of the people he shot will be held off until the criminal trial is done. His problem though in the civil trial is that the next of kin need only show on a balance of probabilities in a civil trial what he did was reckless and/or unreasonable.

 

He was pointing with his rifle. You don't have to wait to get shot to defend yourself. Again I am just showing there are going to be at least two sides to every issue raised.