minoanmiss | I would have liked to be surprised

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minoanmiss

Kyle Rittenhouse is the next George Zimmerman.

Current Mood: bitter

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gwydion

Yes.

From:

dine

sadly so true

From:

lilysea

I'm angry and appalled by how openly biased the judge was

the judges behaviour has mistrial written all over it

From:

cjsmith

Yes! I don’t know the law at all but I wish I knew more about what could be done in situations like this. That was a farce.

From:

adrian_turtle

Because defendants are presumed innocent, prosecutors generally don't get to appeal because of a judge's mistakes. Sometimes a person can be sued for civil damages, or prosecuted for a slightly different crime (like if they were acquitted of attempted murder in state court, a federal court could prosecute them for conspiracy to violate civil rights.) But I don't think that's going to happen here. The judge showed bias, but not a LOT worse than other judges. Most criminal trials are just not publicized, so different kinds of bias are less evident.

Attempts to reverse an acquittal are rare, and I think they SHOULD be rare. They're a weapon we should use selectively, when powerful people have been acquitted for reasons that are obviously grossly unfair. I think part of the reason Rittenhouse was acquitted is that the jury felt sorry for a crying 17-year-old, and I kind of want juries to be moved by pity sometimes? I don't want courts to always defer to cops or CEOs or politicians...those are the cases I think we need to push back on. Also, I think that if we're going to spend huge chunks of political capital on fighting racial bias in the courts, we should do it where the racism is more obvious. Like the McMichael case in Georgia, though I hope they will not be acquitted.

From:

minoanmiss

You're not wrong, you're absolutely not wrong, but, well, I'm a little bitter that people don't have sympathy for the crying Black 17 year olds.

From:

amaebi

And you're right.

From:

julian

Amen.

From:

buggery

As I said elsewhere, Judge Schroeder was so blatantly biased that not only was I not surprised his meddling led to a verdict of Not Guilty, I *was* surprised he didn't offer to kiss away Rittenhouse's fake tears.

In the unlikely event the jury had done the right thing and disregarded enough of Schroeder's instructions to pull a reverse-jury-nullification and hand down a Guilty verdict, I have no doubt whatsoever that Schroeder was ready and eager to simply set aside their verdict.

From:

lilysea

I have no doubt whatsoever that Schroeder was ready and eager to simply set aside their verdict.

I didn't realise judges were allowed to DO that!

From:

buggery

It's rare, and the circumstances under which it can happen vary by jurisdiction, but yes: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/judgment_notwithstanding_the_verdict_(jnov)

I hadn't known about the possibility myself until it happened in the so-called "British Nanny case" involving "shaken baby syndrome": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward_case

From:

ckd

I was in the jury pool for that judge's courtroom the week before. (Not selected.)

From:

cmcmck

Appalling! :o(

From:

lunabee34

Yep. :(

From:

julian

Ayup.

And the way laws are created and implemented in some states is *really fking scary*.

From:

amaebi

It's horrifying. :(

Chun Woo tells me that he loves his Republican friends, he really does, but he disagrees with their politics so often, and they're so wrong about this. (Apparently they're engaged in triumphalism.)

From:

minoanmiss

Chun Woo is a better person than I am. Please give him a great big hug for me.

From:

amaebi

I will give him the hug. :)

When he was in middle school, Chun Woo was sure that I was an extremist anti-rightie.

Then during his first two years of high school he became extremely bothered by his rightwing classmates-- they were the nicest people! how could they hold the views they did! I suggested that they probably were nice to everyone they thought completely human, and that at their age it was extremely likely that most of their views came from their families and other portions of their environment, and that things could change.

I think he's settled into finding that satisfying, which I tend to think is a good thing in an environment where so many, especially jocks, are righties. Given that I trust his ability to tell a nice person from not-so-much.

From:

sabotabby

Except, as has been pointed out, he's potentially even more dangerous. He's already got a job offer as a congressional aide. Whereas Zimmerman was suspiciously less white to these kinds of people.