It was deciding whether at the very moments that he used deadly force could he argue that it was reasonable to believe he was in serious danger of bodily harm or death. What this means is that the jury wasn’t rendering a judgment on whether Rittenhouse should’ve brought a gun with him to Kenosha, whether he had good politics, what precedent his behavior could set, or whether it was appropriate to cosplay a paramedic or a police officer. In this case, Rittenhouse can argue that even if he provoked others to attack him by openly carrying his semi-automatic rifle at a mob scene, he was still able to use deadly force under Wisconsin law because he reasonably believed he had no other alternatives at those moments to avoid death or great bodily harm. What the law taketh away, it giveth back.
Even then, however, the law says a defendant may still use deadly force if he reasonably believes he has no other means to avoid death or great bodily harm. It provides that a “person who engages in unlawful conduct of a type likely to provoke others to attack, and who does provoke an attack, is not allowed to use or threaten force in self-defense against that attack.” That prohibition would seem to apply to Rittenhouse, whose alleged illegal possession of a semi-automatic rifle provoked others to attack him. Generally, someone who provokes an attack is unable to use self-defense, but Wisconsin law is a little more generous, even contradictory. Under that law, deadly force is permitted if a defendant “reasonably believed that the force used was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.” Reasonableness is to be viewed based on “the defendant’s position under the circumstances that existed at the time of the alleged offense.”
attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.Īs she explained in a column for MSNBC prior to the verdict, that that was a very high bar to meet under Wisconsin’s vaguely worded law:
Not guilty kyle rittenhouse trial#
While our national conversation among liberals often centered on the Rittenhouse trial as a matter of racial justice, the crux of the legal battle was whether the prosecution could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse did not act in self-defense when he fired his shots, according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former U.S.
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