Rittenhouse Jury ‘Not Guilty’: Three Courtrooms, One Nation on Trial
Court cases that are ultimately about the state of our nation are playing out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Brunswick, Georgia, and Charlottesville, Virginia.
The first of those cases ended this morning as I was preparing this post, with the jury finding Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges. I suspect repercussions from this case will play out in streets all over the country in the coming days.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has pleaded for calm but deployed 500 National Guard troops in anticipation of post-verdict protests.
Because he was underaged, Kyle Rittenhouse got a friend to buy him an AR-15. His mother drove him across state lines to a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha.
On August 23, 2020, a Kenosha Police officer shot Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, multiple times in the back. The shooting was captured on cellphone video and quickly spread online, and the ensuing public anger and frustration led to incidents of violence and destruction that night and the next night.
Rittenhouse displayed his weapon from a rooftop and on the street. When the opportunity presented itself, he fatally shot two people and wounded another. He crossed state lines again, went home, and went to sleep. The following day Rittenhouse turned himself into police after being identified in media accounts as the shooter.
He was facing charges with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide and faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted of the most serious charge.
At issue in the courtroom is the distinction between self-defense and vigilantism. Outside the courtroom, Rittenhouse’s actions have been praised by right wingers who seem eager to validate the premise that shooting the opposition is a legitimate form of self-expression.
The judge overseeing the case has seemingly bent over backwards in ways favoring the defendant, and it was entirely possible he'd grant defense motions for a mistrial.
From the New Republic:
The judge’s conduct in the Rittenhouse case has also offered more cinematic clarity about state bias: Judge Bruce Schroeder banned the use of the word “victim” and encouraged the jury to applaud for one of the defense’s witnesses on Veteran’s Day; and when his phone rang in the courtroom, the ringtone was, quite darkly, a popular Donald Trump campaign song. In the final days of the trial, he allowed the teenager himself to draw slips of paper out of a raffle drum to determine which of the 18 jurors would participate in securing his imprisonment or release.
The extremist right and their enablers seem poised to respond with violence to a verdict they disagree with. Supposedly hundreds of Proud Boys are headed for the city and supposedly they are looking for a fight.
Even without the explicit use of violence, self-proclaimed vigilantes are becoming more brazen as they invade spaces of progressive protest and use fear and intimidation to send their message. Supposedly this is about preserving law and order — Rittenhouse said he traveled to Kenosha with the intent to protect private property.
Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who’s praised Rittenhouse for “helping the country” has floated hiring him as a congressional intern. Conservative author J.D. Vance, currently running for U.S. Senate, called Rittenhouse's trial a "farce," adding that "it's child abuse masquerading as justice in this country."
What’s important to remember in this case are actions on the right attempting to legitimize vigilantism. Republican legislators in more than a half-dozen states have introduced legislation exempting people who drive cars into a protest from either civil or criminal legal consequences. Oklahoma and Florida have already enacted such laws. Legislation criminalizing types or locations of protests has been enacted in 20 states.
Laws drafted by or for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in league with Dirty Energy lobbyists imposing penalties for protests near oil pipelines and/or ‘critical infrastructure’ have been enacted in at least 15 states.
Rittenhouse’s actions are just one brush stroke in the larger picture of white vigilante violence that paints much of American political culture.
https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1461761745739927552?s=20
***
In Georgia, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William "Roddie" Bryan Jr. face charges including malice and felony murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man jogging through a mostly white neighborhood. All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.
The case was only prosecuted after video of the shooting surfaced.
The McMichaels say they were making a citizen's arrest on Arbery, whom they suspected of burglary, and that Travis McMichael shot him with a shotgun in self-defense. Bryan, who recorded the video, hit Arbery with his truck after he joined the McMichaels in chasing Arbery, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent has testified.
Race has played a role in many aspects of the trial beyond the obvious vigilantism. In a county that is nearly one-third Black, eleven members of the jury are white. After making extraordinary efforts to exclude Blacks for the panel, the defense had the gaul to complain to the news media that “Bubbas,” --white males born in the South, over 40 years of age, and without four-year college degrees-- were significantly underrepresented in the panel.
After Rev. Al Sharpton sat with the victim’s family in the courtroom, defense lawyer Kevin Gough told Judge Timothy Walmsley. “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here,” saying their presence was an attempt to intimidate the jury.
On Thursday, Rev. Jamal H. Bryant of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church led more than 100 other Black pastors for a “Wall of Prayer” gathered outside the Glynn County Courthouse.
Via CNN:
Some say they also want to call attention to the critical role they play when Black families are devastated by police brutality or vigilante violence. Black clergy have historically sat with victims' families at trials and funerals, stood beside them at rallies, and press conferences and even been appointed to speak on behalf of families.
They were particularly known to show up during the civil rights movement when Black people were victimized by racist violence. For example, it was Black pastors who spoke out after the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 that killed four Black girls.
The case has gone to the jury for consideration.
Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, speaking with her attorney after the defense rested, said she feels confident that the jury will return a guilty verdict.
“I want to remind you it was 74 days that we went without an arrest, things happen and now we’re here and I’m very confident that we will get a guilty verdict, very confident,” Wanda Cooper-Jones said while standing just outside the courthouse doors.
The far right hasn’t gone to bat for the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, in part because local tradition initially made it seem like there would be no charges. Two prosecutors didn’t take action; they were too connected to the community surrounding the defendants.
None-the-less, the core issue of vigilantism in this case remains. What appeared to be lynching by truck and guns almost never made it to court. You have to wonder about all the other cases where no video is found.
***
Events in Charlottesville are happening in the context of a civil trial. Sines v. Kessler is the result of four years of preparation and research on behalf of nine plaintiffs who say their civil rights were violated because white supremacist Unite the Right rally organizers urged people to arm themselves and participate in acts of violence.
In August 2017, extremists chanting "Jews will not replace us!" encircled counter-protesters on the University of Virginia campus, wielding and in some cases throwing burning tiki torches as they marched. One of the participants, neo-Nazi and Hitler sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car from Ohio to attend, and later plowed it through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.
Only a handful of arrests occurred following the rally, mostly for simple assault or disorderly conduct. Follow up inquiries, by among others, The Police Foundation, showed that local law enforcement was unprepared for the violence that occured. To people on the ground, it certainly appeared as though local law enforcement was actually helping the right wingers.
Former President Donald Trump, under pressure to condemn the violence, danced around the issue, satisfying nobody. Ultimately his comments about “very fine people on both sides” will mark his place in history. The alt-right, after-all, played a role in engaging the people who’ve come to be called The Base. And violence prone groups like the Proud Boys continue to act as enforcers in the cultural wars propagated by the right.
The lawsuit is based on the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed by Congress in 1871 to protect African Americans from vigilante attacks. Section 1985 of the law authorizes lawsuits against people who conspire to deprive a person of equal protection under the law.
A lawsuit using a different basis for determining civil liability effectively neutered San Diego County’s most famous right wing extremist, Tom Metger via a $12.5 million judgement.
The intent in Sines V. Kessler is to obtain justice by making it financially impossible for so-called alt-right leaders to engage politically.
The defendants in the case, who’ve mostly shown themselves to be reprobates, are claiming that they’ve already won, given the widespread media coverage of their testimony.
Jonathan M. Katz, who has covered the trial throughout, provided this analysis via his newsletter, The Racket:
In that respect, a win for everyone else cannot consist merely of the jury finding for the plaintiffs, but doing so in a meaningful way—awarding a sum that will bankrupt the white nationalists on trial, and serve as a warning to others.
The white nationalists’ argument comes down to self-defense: that the counterprotesters (namely, Antifa and Black Lives Matter) were the real aggressors, and that all of their weaponry—shields, helmets, guns, James Fields’ car—were just used to defend themselves.
The plaintiffs have mounted an extraordinarily well-evidenced case that this was not true—that the Nazis spent months preparing for the violence they intentionally inflicted against Jews, Black people, and their allies. But during jury selection, many of the jurors expressed personal biases against Antifa and Black Lives Matter (which, as the judge told them repeatedly, are not parties to the case). And the fact is that the Nazis’ argument is almost identical in that respect to the one being used by Kyle Rittenhouse, and similar to the self-defense case being mounted by Ahmaud Arbery’s killers—arguments that have won widespread currency on right-wing and even centrist media. We will see shortly, in Charlottesville and elsewhere, whose arguments will carry the day.
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead photo by Logan Cyrus