Good summation of the Rittenhouse trial so far
For those watching the trial, there was a shocking disconnect from prior news coverage and the actual evidence.
thehill.com
I just finished listening to a 2 hour long deep dive on a law podcast (Opening Arguments, always excellent) which goes almost 100% against this, and I'm inclined to trust them more than an op-ed on The Hill, especially having perused the authors twitter feed.
In particular they point out that bringing additional lesser charges to the jury at the end of a case is completely routine in these cases, and it strikes me as very disingenuous for the op-ed author to not acknowledge that and instead present it as a failure.
Their overarching points were
- The Judge has behaved really fairly. When he got mad at the prosecutor it was well deserved and he'd actually let a few things go beforehand. There's a disconnect with the media because we all saw him rip the prosecutor a new one, but the jury (who get sent in and out all the time over really small things) had no idea.
- The prosecutor hasn't been terrible. He had a really bad opening 10mins on the cross examination of Rittenhouse, but that's the time to go for a risky line of questioning that might backfire because the important thing is how you finish 4+ hours later, that's what the jury tend to remember.
-Trying to impeach Rittenhouse for his silence after was shot down by the judge like the Hill article says, but they didn't mention that he very nearly allowed it when he was told that Rittenhouse has been giving loads of interviews about the case and the events of that night.
Also OA is at odds with The Hill writer thinking Rittenhouse would be tempted to not put Rittenhouse on the stand because self-defence is an affirmative defence, so he has to prove to the jury he was in danger and had to protect his life. Almost impossible to do that without direct testimony.
There's a lot of things in this Op-ed they've debunked before, a year ago, with the overcharging and the simultaneous charging as an adult and u18 weapons violations - those two things do not contradict each other, the law is really clear you can be tried as an adult under 18.
The end of the cross went really well for the prosecution. He nailed Rittenhouse on quite a few really important point in particular for not giving any medical aid to the 2 men he shot, even though he told the court there was no one near him at that point, he was in direct sight of the police who could protect him so he wasn't in danger, he had his medical kit and the surviving victim was calling for medical help.
The prosecutors also won the absolutely massive point that Rittenhouse was pointing his gun at people before they threatened him, and got him to contradict himself over whether holding a gun is provocation or not.
To be honest 2 hours is a bloody long podcast and but I'll post it here when it's released tomorrow and you might find it worthwhile. It made me much more optimistic about the outcome than the recent press coverage.
www.bbc.co.uk
www.sfgate.com