It's my favorite day of the year: when a landmark court case causes everyone in America to all of a sudden think they're a legal expert and begin spewing knowledge online.
First off, it's telling that this has become an annual tradition in America. The fact we don't get a three-day weekend for this is absurd and should be reported to the National Labor Relations Board. Secondly, by writing a piece complaining about this phenomenon, I am feeding directly into it, which I fully acknowledge only exacerbates the problem. But as does everyone in this country right now, I do have some thoughts on the verdict, or perhaps more specifically, everyone's reaction to the verdict.
This whole court case is chronicling an absolutely tragic event that resulted in the death of two men, and my heart continues to go out to those families. That being said, I don't think I or anyone else in the country not in that courtroom is in any position to unequivocally call BS on the verdict. My gut tells me Rittenhouse was there to cause violence and the killings were not entirely motivated by self-defense. But no one besides the people within that courtroom saw all of the evidence of the case, and the bar for legally proving Rittenhouse's actions were not done in self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty low. This was an almost three-week trial. It's completely reasonable to believe at some point there was at least one significant piece of evidence that we on our living room couches did not see that made the jury think it was at least plausible Rittenhouse's actions were done in self-defense. All it takes is a bit of uncertainty.
To repeat: nothing I said in the paragraph above is a statement of my own viewpoint on whether or not Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense. I candidly didn't follow the case closely enough to have a hard opinion on the verdict's accuracy. The previous paragraph is just a reminder that the jury's verdict wasn't, "We think Kyle Rittenhouse is a sweet and borderline cuddly little boy." It was, "We think there is at least a reasonable chance his actions were done in self-defense." One of those is drastically easier to prove than the other, and that's just how our legal system works. And quite honestly, changing the standard to be any less lenient could very directly lead to more mistaken convictions than false exonerations, and that would be the biggest injustice of them all.
And I also want to reemphasize that this is only tangentially a case about race. There are plenty of people arguing Rittenhouse would have been deemed guilty if he was Black, and there are points to make there. We also cannot forget that this whole incident happened at a riot started in the name of racial justice. But Rittenhouse killed two white men, and I'm convinced at least half of people on Twitter don't realize that.
There is absolutely no reason any normal civilian in this country should have access to a semi-automatic rifle, and Kyle Rittenhouse undoubtedly made some unspeakably poor choices that night. But I won't be praying for any ill will on the jury. I'll just be praying for this country to heal and do better.
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