UPDATE: LegalEagle did a video on this.
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges after shooting three people, killing two of them. He feels vindicated, saying “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The truth is that he did plenty wrong, and what happened was largely due to his poor choices. But that doesn’t mean that he’s guilty of the charges against him.
I was once on a jury in which I was elected foreman. When it came time to deliberate, everyone spontaneously said they thought the guy was guilty; they were ready to convict.
But I reminded them that the instructions from the judge said that three things had to be shown in order for him to be guilty — A, B, and C — with detailed instructions about how each part could be shown. The prosecution had shown A and C, but did anyone think that B was shown?
Not one juror thought that the prosecution had satisfied requirement B. The instructions were clear that all three must be met. Looking for a way out, I wrote a note and had had the bailiff deliver it to the judge; back came a note just saying to follow the instructions.
So we did. I read the “not guilty” verdict in court.
As the jurors were leaving, the prosecuting attorney, standing next to the judge at her desk, stopped me, saying “How could you let that guy go? He was guilty!”
I turned to face her and the judge. “Oh, we all thought he was guilty,” I assured her. “But none of us thought that you had satisfied part B of what was required to prove him guilty.” Neither said a thing, and after a moment of awkward silence, I left. I have often wondered what was going through the mind of the judge, whom I had asked for guidance on the point.
There was actually one woman on the jury who ignored the instructions and voted guilty anyway. But that’s not what is supposed to happen — we convict people for demonstrably violating the law, not for seeming guilty. The idea that a juror would vote to convict you of a crime even though the legal standard for evidence has not been met, just because it is his/her intuition that you are guilty, should scare the crap out of you.
Rittenhouse had a really bad idea that fed his ego but set the stage for a terrible outcome: he provoked people in an already tense situation, and when they came after him for it he was so frightened that he just assumed they were going to kill him if they got the gun. Perhaps he was projecting his own psychology onto them; I think it’s far more likely they would have turned the weapon over to the police or just emptied it of bullets and thrown it in a dumpster. But Rittenhouse was in way over his head, scared to death, and in effect his fear justified his killing them. If you just want to slap him upside the head, perhaps with a 2×4, I don’t blame you. But don’t jump to the conclusion that the jury was biased. And don’t interpret the acquittal as meaning that he “didn’t do anything wrong.”
Stray Thoughts 