Paul Butler Also Gets The Rittenhouse Case Wrong
More bad analysis of the Rittenhouse case in this Washington Post column, by Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler:
"Kyle Rittenhouse beat his case because he put on the best defense money can buy.
Don’t believe the hype that Rittenhouse, who was prosecuted for homicide after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 was acquitted because self-defense cases are tough for prosecutors to win. More than 90 percent of people who are prosecuted for any crime, including homicide, plead guilty. The few who dare to go to trial usually lose — including in murder cases.
Rittenhouse’s $2 million legal defense funds enabled his lawyers, before his trial, to stage separate “practice” jury trials — one in which 18-year-old Rittenhouse took the stand and one in which he did not. The more favorable reaction from the pretend jurors when Rittenhouse testified informed the decision to let the teenager tell his story to the real jurors. His apparently well-rehearsed testimony was probably the most important factor in the jury ultimately letting Rittenhouse walk...."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/21/kyle-rittenhouses-2-million-legal-funds-won-his-case-most-defendants-cant-afford-that-quality-aid/
So there's your Speculative Narrative for you: Kyle Rittenhouse only won his case because of effective coaching by a high dollar ("$2 million") defense team, allowing him to craft a convincing story and stick to it. As if the incontrovertible facts of the case played no role in the jury decision.
(I'll merely note the irrelevance of quoting the statistics that Butler brought up in order to cast suspicion on the acquittal of Rittenhouse; offering that as tactical support for his argument is just flat out embarrassing. Although anyone who disagrees and finds the quoted metrics relevant is welcome to show their reasoning.)
My policy is to refrain from posting my own verdict on a heavily publicized criminal case, unless I conclude that there's a body of crucial evidence that makes it clear beyond all doubt about who did what when. The Rittenhouse case is one of those rare examples. I didn't require million-dollar defense attorneys to conclude from the available evidence that someone who didn't fire his weapon until after he was physically accosted by people with obvious hostile intent is not guilty by reason of self-defense.
"...Regardless of whether Rittenhouse wants or deserves to be, he is now the poster child for reactionary White men who seek to take the law in their own hands, who want to patrol Black Lives Matter protests with assault weapons and who think that violence is a legitimate form of political discourse...."
So, the only people "taking the law into their own hands" were the Kenosha residents trying to keep their city from going up in flames?
Butler is also implying that the Kenosha riot was merely a "Black Lives Matter" protest? No one has plausible grounds to complain that Black Lives Matter demonstrations are being slandered as violent, lawless riots when they've already implicitly granted their credence to that narrative.
The New York Times published a detailed, long-form story on the civil unrest in Kenosha on October 26, 1971. (Better late than never.) The headline:
"Kyle Rittenhouse and the New Era of Political Violence: What brought the teenager and so many others to the streets of Kenosha, Wis., equipped for war?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/magazine/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-wisconsin.html
New York Times skeptics will be surprised to learn that this article consists of actual news reportage, not an op-ed. And the story does a good job of explaining exactly what it was that did bring them to the streets, in a group, as an armed presence. ("Equipped for war" is toxic hyperbole. Just what we don't need any more of. At the very least, it shows a level of ignorance so appalling that the headline editor deserves to be fired.)
I could pull some excerpts and post them here, but I don't want to be accused of cherry-picking out of context. This is an article that deserves to be read in full. If someone else wants to pull some excerpts to support the narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse was a lone vigilante who traveled to a strange city in order to find an excuse to shoot and kill nonwhites and antiracist white allies involved in protests that were clearly intended as support for the Black Lives Matter cause, be my guest. (Note: Comments on my Iconoclasm articles are currently disabled. I’ll be explaining more about that in an upcoming entry here. The content of this post also appears in the story comment section for Matt Taibbi’s TK News entry, below; anyone who wants to respond can find my post in the comments and add replies there.)
