Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges, which should come as no surprise to anyone who followed the facts of the case — though sadly, that does not include our politicians and media pundits.
Rittenhouse should never have been unjustly smeared, served up as a political prop by those like our current president, who implied in a campaign video that the teenager from Antioch, Ill., was a “white supremacist.”
Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) believes in defunding the police and emptying Rikers. But not apparently in this case, as he recklessly tweeted: “Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key.”
Such sentiments spurred Kenosha, Wis., to bring a case it must have known it couldn’t win.
The defense’s legal position that Rittenhouse, 18, acted in self-defense was fully supported by the plentiful amounts of physical and testimonial evidence. One prosecution witness, Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived being shot by Rittenhouse, admitted to aiming a pistol at him before being wounded in response. Video footage of the chaotic scene highlights multiple angles of the shootings and Rittenhouse’s attempted retreat.
Eighteenth-century English jurist Sir William Blackstone outlined the necessity of an individual’s retreat, “as far as he conveniently or safely can,” prior to the exercise of deadly force. There was no stand-your-ground law or castle doctrine to apply in the Rittenhouse case, only a clear-cut example of violence employed in defense of self.
Rittenhouse attempted to avoid and evade each one of his attackers — none of whom he targeted. Whether verbally threatening and attempting to disarm him (Joseph Rosenbaum), using a skateboard as a weapon with attempted disarmament (Anthony Huber) or pointing a pistol (Grosskreutz), each man shot was the aggressor in the encounter. The jury certainly recognized these facts.
Commentators also dismissed Rittenhouse’s decision to take the stand, with MSNBC’s Joy Reid mocking his “white tears.” But Rittenhouse’s lead counsel Mark Richards knew what mattered was the jury.
“Had to put him on. It wasn’t a close call,” Richards said. And then: “In Wisconsin, if you don’t put a client on the stand, you’re going to lose. Period.”
The prosecution here was woeful. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger repeatedly raised the ire of Judge Bruce Schroeder with unforced errors along procedural and due-process lines. The prosecutor’s clumsy — and wholly unsafe — handling of the defendant’s Smith & Wesson M&P 15 became an Internet meme of awfulness.
A not-guilty verdict was not Rittenhouse’s only pathway to freedom. There also exist grounds, I believe, for the judge to have declared a mistrial (with prejudice). Prosecution errors during the pre-trial period (failing to turn over evidence, as the defense has argued) and at trial pale in comparison to the egregious decision by the district attorney’s office to bring intentional homicide charges in the first place.
They wanted to make Kyle Rittenhouse a scapegoat for violence in our cities, when it was the rioters who burned down buildings and looted stores who represented the real culprits.
That said, as well-intentioned as Rittenhouse may have been, the then-17-year-old had no business strapped with a rifle in Kenosha that night. Just because you may be legally permitted do something, doesn’t mean you should. Or, as noted political theorist Russell Kirk once posited, “A man has always a right to self-defense; but he does not have, in all times and all places, a right to carry a drawn sword.”
This entire episode should serve as a clarion call to those who foolishly bought into the wholesale de-policing and reimagining-public-safety movements. When the police are held back, stood down and forced into an observer role, the criminal element will greedily inhabit the void.
If we are to discourage other citizens from assuming a Rittenhouse-style, armed-guard role in order to occupy the public-safety vacuum, we must always allow our police to do their jobs.
As the nation braces for potential unrest in the wake of this verdict, we face a reckoning. Anarchy and violence cannot be the default response when a jury verdict we disagree with is returned. The Rittenhouse jury got this one right. Let’s pray our nation does the same.
James A. Gagliano is a retired FBI supervisory special agent and doctoral candidate in homeland security at St. John’s University.
