Today's Truth and Consequences Zoom Chat
Just a quick reminder that I’ll be Zoom Casting today at 12:30 PM. The link is here.
Along with your questions and contributions, I’ll be focusing on two pieces I wrote this week. The first looked at how the GOP’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill will likely only intensify political polarization and congressional dysfunction. The second focused on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the situational ethics that many on the left are employing when discussing the case.
I did want to highlight a comment I received on the latter piece from reader Tom Fisher:
Whoa! Former prosecutor and former criminal defense attorney here (and a big fan of your work.) I don't understand these two people you bring to your case analysis. Your criticism of your former self is valid; you jumped to the guilty assumption way too fast. But the criticism is coming from your newer self who is jumping to the innocent assumption way too fast. The statement that "what's far less clear is whether he committed a crime," strikes me as almost absurd. Had you just written "first degree murder" instead of "a crime," you might have pulled this column off, but even then, you are walking where juries and fact-finders tread, with a bit too much self assurance. Also, your indictment of Wisconsin as being one of only three states that consider 17-year olds adults implies that other states would handle this differently. In my own state--which isn't one of those three--Rittenhouse would certainly have been waived up and tried as an adult. I imagine that is true in most, if not all, other states. I see your disagreement with the concept, but juvenile justice systems generally are not set up to handle an almost 18-year old who killed two people regardless of your conclusion that he is innocent. If you are going to take all the people who are in this situation and keep them out of adult court, so be it but you will need to design some sort of new system to pick up the old juveniles. I assume that you are ready to do that. Fine with me, but it doesn't exist in my state and probably doesn't exist in most others. Try him as a juvenile here and if convicted, he will serve no time whatsoever. Prosecutors need to work with the system that they have. Your conclusion about self-defense would be fine except that this is what juries do. It looks like Rittenhouse has enough facts to make out his case but you don't get to decide it. Was he really threatened to that degree or not? You have decided to accept his portrayal of what happened over the prosecution's portrayal of what happened I don't have any idea whether he will be convicted. You don't have any idea whether he will be acquitted. Finally, it is not blood lust to be this sick and tired of a system that consistently convicts young black men while acquitting young white men of the same acts. It is frustration, it is exhaustion. Those are not the same as blood lust.
I can’t entirely agree with everything here, but I think Tom makes a compelling point about the inability of the juvenile justice system to handle a case like Rittenhouse’s (one that I did not adequately take into account). In addition, I fear he’s right that I’ve bent a bit too far over backward to take the contrarian position that Rittenhouse is not guilty.
Whatever the case, I found it interesting food for thought and hopefully will inform our conversation today. Looking forward to seeing you at 12:30!