Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty today. This comes as no surprise to us because we called this case self-defense from literally the first day (https://copblaster.com/blast/25930/kenosha-protester-shot-in-self-defense-by-kyle-rittenhouse), continued to call it self-defense after his testimony simply confirmed what we saw on film (https://copblaster.com/blast/45707/kyle-rittenhouse-one-brave-boy-testifies-at-his-own-trial), and called the likelihood of conviction "almost impossible" after Judge Bruce Schroder dismissed the misdemeanor weapons charge (https://copblaster.com/blast/45709/kyle-rittenhouse-weapons-charge-dismissed-what-does-that-mean). We agree with the jury's verdict and applaud them for giving this boy a fair trial.
We believed that Rittenhouse was defending himself from day one when we were one of the first outlets to post his name with the conclusion that he acted in self-defense. Our self-defense conclusion was based on a series of videos from the shooting. The first video clearly showed Rittenhouse running away from Joseph Rosenbaum, Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse, closed within feet of him, and at the last possible moment Rittenhouse opened fire. The other videos clearly showed Rittenhouse running down the street before being attacked, falling to the ground, and shooting two people after one of them attacked him with a skateboard and the other had a gun in his hand. Our earlier analysis was done under the assumption that Rittenhouse was engaged in unlawful conduct by being a minor in possession of a firearm. In that scenario he would have had a duty to flee before he could legally use force to defend himself. We concluded that it is hard to find a better example of someone fulfilling their duty to flee than Kyle Rittenhouse. Then Judge Schroeder dismissed the weapons charge, so we had to re-evaluate a little bit because without being unlawfully in possession of a gun, Rittenhouse had the right to stand his ground as a law abiding citizen. It was then that we realized his acquittal was a near certainty because he fled without having a duty to flee.
This has been an awkward case for us because we usually support Black Lives Matter and Antifa in their efforts to fight the police, but at the same time we are against charging people with crimes they did not commit. Our defense of Rittenhouse was not a defense of his decision to go to Kenosha in the first place. We defended Rittenhouse because after reviewing the evidence we concluded that he was acting within the scope of the Wisconsin self-defense statute. We do not believe in charging people with crimes they did not commit for the sake of social justice. Just because someone is right wing doesn't make them a criminal and if the left abuses the courts to put right wingers in jail for crimes they did not commit then they are no better than the fascists they've been protesting. We have seen cases where the question of guilt or innocence seems have boiled down to a question of whether or not a defendant is a white supremacist. The political leanings of the defendant is almost always irrelevant to the question of guilt.