A Great Day for the Home Team
Friday was a great day for self-defense.
In Vero Beach, Florida, Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted by a jury of murder and attempted murder, based on self-defense. He had shot at SWAT officers executing a no-knock warrant. They killed his girlfriend, so they charged him with her murder (look what you made us do!) and with the attempted murder of a law-enforcement officer. Not guilty on those charges.
Unfortunately, Coffee is a convicted felon, not allowed to possess a firearm, and the jury convicted him of Felon in Possession, even though the fact that he had to defend himself against home invaders manifestly demonstrates that he was justified in breaking that law. The government hates it when you defend yourself against the government, and it’s going to extract payment one way or another.
And, oh yeah, some guy named Rittenhouse was acquitted.
I’m a criminal-defense lawyer. I see every defense win as a win for my team.
There are plenty of people concerned with the greater good of society, worried about whether an acquittal promotes the ends of social justice or antiracism or democracy or whatever their cause is. They take it personally when it doesn’t. Plenty of those; some of them criminal-defense lawyers.
I’m not cut out for that. People do bad things; this is a given. We are never going to change them. It’s not a personal affront to me when people get away with doing bad things. Yank your client out from under the hooves of the state, and I’ll celebrate it with you, regardless of politics.
But some of those who are personally offended by a wrongdoer (at least, the wrong wrongdoer) evading state punishment are criminal-defense lawyers, and I’ve heard from some of them this week. None of them had the facts right.
“Crossed state lines with a rifle.”
From day one, people outraged by what they thought Rittenhouse had done were arguing that he was guilty because he crossed state lines with an AR-15 to go to Kenosha.
But the “crossing of state lines” was traveling from the small town where he lived part-time with his mother to the nearest small city, about 20 miles away (where his father lived).
The Illinois-Wisconsin line is, lest you wonder, a poorly regulated border, with its customs and immigrations stations rarely attended. Often you can cross without showing your passport!
And when Rittenhouse performed this less-than-daring border crossing, he didn’t have his rifle. The rifle had stayed in Wisconsin.
Rittenhouse didn’t cross state lines with a gun. Crossing state lines with a gun is not a crime. And even if crossing state lines were a crime, it would not affect the perpetrator’s right to self-defense. The right to self-defense is judged at the moment of the act, based on what the defendant reasonably believed at that time. Under Wisconsin law, a defendant may temporarily lose the right to self-defense if he commits some unlawful act that provokes an attack on him, but “crossing state lines with one in the chamber” could not be provocation in this case, since Kyle’s attackers had no way to know that he had done this. Nor had they any way to know that he was under 18, or that his buddy Dominic Black had lied on an ATF Form 4473 to buy the gun for him.
(Black is still in trouble here. He was waiting to see what Binger would give him for his testimony in Rittenhouse’s case—“no promises”—and if I were he I’d be worrying that Binger would take his frustration at losing the case out on him.)
Binger and Krause made this argument in their closing: that Rittenhouse’s right to self-defense should be judged not by whether he had a reasonable belief that he was about to be attacked with deadly force, but by the gestalt of the event. He shouldn’t have been there! He was asking for trouble! You aren’t allowed to defend yourself if you’re carrying a rifle! Everyone has to take a beating now and then! His skirt was too short!
None of that is the law.
The law is that if he provoked Rosenbaum to attack him, and then he ran away, he is entitled to defend himself with deadly force if Rosenbaum threatens grievous bodily harm, which he did.
I don’t believe that anyone who has trained for violence saw the videos of Rosenbaum’s behavior that night, including pursuing a man with a rifle, and thought that the man with the rifle was not entirely justified in using deadly force to defend himself against the 5’3” fireplug of a man who “wasn’t afraid to go back to jail.”
Maybe Rittenhouse went to Kenosha secretly wanting to kill someone. Unfortunately Rosenbaum and Huber and Jumpkick and Grosskreutz all had a cavalier attitude toward his rifle, which gave him that opportunity. If you think someone might be trying to goad you into attacking him so that he can use deadly force against you, don’t. I don’t believe Rittenhouse went to Kenosha wanting to commit murder, though, because he missed a bunch of chances to do so. Most conspicuously, he didn’t fire at Grosskreutz until (by Grosskreutz’s own admission) Grosskreutz pointed his pistol at him.
Speaking of the Greater Good of Society
Q: What does “ACLU” stand for?
A: Nothing.
“Unfortunately,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union, the state did not get to put Kyle Rittenhouse in prison for life.
(Further comments for paid subscribers follow.)