RSN: FOCUS: Paige Williams | The Outsized Meaning of the Rittenhouse Verdict

 

 

27 November 21

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

WE’RE REALLY TRYING TO MAKE UP GROUND HERE — It’s late in the month and we are a long way from where we would normally be and where we need to be on donations. A huge number of people who come here often are not donating. We’re getting into serious trouble over a few donations. Hit the donation link!
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS: Paige Williams | The Outsized Meaning of the Rittenhouse Verdict
Paige Williams, The New Yorker
Williams writes: "Two portraits of Rittenhouse emerged during the two-week trial. The defense portrayed him as a selfless teen-ager and aspiring law-enforcement officer who wanted to help defend Kenosha and provide first aid. Prosecutors argued that Rittenhouse courted trouble by hubristically inserting himself into a volatile situation."

A Wisconsin self-defense law made it difficult for the jury to convict—an outcome that was celebrated by the Republican Party’s violent fringe.

On Thursday, as the jury deliberations in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial stretched toward day four, the defense appeared worried. Mark Richards, the lead counsel for Rittenhouse—the teen-ager who faced life in prison for killing two men, severely injuring a third, and recklessly endangering the safety of others during last year’s civil unrest in Kenosha—noticed that the jurors were sitting in a new pattern. Richards later remarked to news reporters that perhaps this indicated a divided jury.

The jurors were debating whether Rittenhouse committed felonies or acted in self-defense when, just before midnight on August 25, 2020, he fired an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle eight times. Rittenhouse, who was then seventeen, lived just across the Illinois border. After watching live streams of the violent protests that erupted in Kenosha following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, he joined his best friend, Dominick Black, in guarding Car Source, a downtown business whose main sales lot had been torched. Both were armed with rifles that they had been keeping at Black’s stepfather’s home in Kenosha.

At trial, Rittenhouse faced a charge of first-degree reckless homicide for killing Joseph Rosenbaum, an enraged but unarmed man who had chased him; first-degree intentional homicide for killing Anthony Huber, a demonstrator who had struck him with a skateboard and then lunged for his rifle; two felony counts of recklessly endangering the safety of the Daily Caller’s video chief, Richie McGinniss, and a demonstrator who had kicked him in the head; and first-degree attempted intentional homicide for shooting Gaige Grosskreutz, a demonstrator and paramedic who was armed with a Glock pistol.

Initially, Rittenhouse also faced a misdemeanor count of unlawfully possessing a dangerous weapon. He was too young to have bought the rifle—Black bought it for him and now faces his own felony trial—but, to the surprise of many, the judge, Bruce Schroeder, dismissed it.

Two portraits of Rittenhouse emerged during the two-week trial. The defense portrayed him as a selfless teen-ager and aspiring law-enforcement officer or paramedic who wanted to help defend Kenosha and provide first aid. Prosecutors argued that Rittenhouse courted trouble by hubristically inserting himself into a volatile situation—he volunteered to help guard property that he did not own, in a city where he did not live, while flaunting, confusingly, both a first-aid kit and a semi-automatic rifle.

The Rittenhouse trial will be remembered for its voluminous video evidence and for live streamers’ role in either documenting, or negatively influencing, historic events. The footage—captured also by demonstrators, a civilian-operated drone, and an F.B.I. surveillance plane—showed every shooting from various angles. The jurors watched numerous clips of Rittenhouse in the moments before and after the shootings. He was interviewed by live streamers and shown yelling, “Anybody need medical?” Not long before the gunfire started, he lied about being an E.M.T. and bragged that, if there was trouble, “I’m running into harm’s way.”

There were also notable, and loud, rebukes. After Rittenhouse’s attorneys moved for a mistrial, accusing the state of overreaching, the lead prosecutor, Thomas Binger, tried to explain himself, but Schroeder boomed, “Don’t get brazen with me!” In one motion, Rittenhouse questioned the integrity of footage that prosecutors alleged showed him provocatively pointing his gun at people first. (One of the prosecutors wearily remarked, “We did not alter the file,” adding, “None of us know how to alter the file.”) The judge acknowledged that the footage made him “very queasy,” but he allowed it.

Putting a criminal defendant on the witness stand is always risky, but Rittenhouse, who had wanted to tell his side of the story since police detectives first questioned him, took the stand for nearly an entire day, last week. When he appeared to break down, his supporters credited his courage; his detractors compared him to Brett Kavanaugh, ridiculing “white male tears.”

The public’s assessments of Rittenhouse’s performance coalesced, predictably, around the hyper-partisanship that distinguished the reactions to the Kenosha shootings from the start. As I reported, in detail, over the summer, opportunists seized on the case—often inaccurately—as a referendum on constitutional freedoms and American racial progress. Schroeder instructed the jurors to treat the defendant like any other witness, assessing him on such factors as credibility, conduct, appearance, demeanor, and apparent intelligence. He told them, “In everyday life, you determine for yourselves the reliability of things people say to you. You should do the same thing here.”

The jurors could be forgiven if they were confused about how to go about their deliberations—the judge sure was. On Monday morning, Schroeder was in the middle of reading thirty-six pages of instructions aloud when he said, “If you decide unanimously that the defendant did not commit the greater crime and was acting lawfully in self-defense”—then stopped. He paused for nineteen seconds, staring off into space and rubbing his fingers together, as he pondered how to explain a pathway to convicting Rittenhouse on lesser counts. Then he said, “I’ve got myself into a midsentence, and I don’t like it.” They worked it out, not to everyone’s satisfaction. At one point, Schroeder declared, “This is a more complicated case than most—than any, frankly, that I can remember.”

Americans had spent the past fifteen months debating Rittenhouse’s culpability, character, proclivities, motivations, and intelligence, and the extent to which he symbolized the country’s shifting relationship with guns—and with one another. The judgment that mattered was that of the seven women and five men of the jury, who were responsible for working through the complexities and nuances of each felony count, one by one.

Around lunchtime on Friday, after four days of deliberation, the jury reached a verdict. The parties were summoned to the courtroom. Rittenhouse took his place at the defense table. His mother, Wendy, and his two sisters, Faith and McKenzie, sat together, in a rear pew, alongside Dave Hancock, a security specialist and military veteran who has become the family’s most visible advocate. Across the aisle, loved ones of the dead clutched one another’s arms. The judge warned the audience to remain unemotional: “Many people do have strong feelings, but we can’t permit any kind of a reaction to the verdict.”

The mood was more tense than at any point during the trial. Rittenhouse, wearing the attentive expression that he had displayed all along, watched the jurors come to their chairs. The forewoman handed a bailiff a set of papers containing each charge—collectively known as “the information”—and each corresponding verdict. Schroeder leafed through the pages, then aligned them with one sharp crack. He said, “The defendant will rise and face the jury and hearken to its verdicts.”

Rittenhouse stood. The court clerk said, “As to the first count of the information—Joseph Rosenbaum—we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty.” Wendy Rittenhouse jolted backward in her seat. By the third “not guilty,” Rittenhouse was losing his composure. On the fifth and final “not guilty,” his knees appeared to buckle.

The jurors were—and are—not required to reveal their calculus. By tradition, even their identities may not be made public. The Rittenhouse jury was known, by sight, only to those who physically attended the trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse. They were not sequestered. They were driven to and from the courthouse in what the judge called a “sealed” vehicle—a bus with blacked-out windows.

It was ultimately impossible to deduce meaning from their demographics or their behavior during the trial—juries are notoriously unpredictable. Was it better or worse—for the prosecution or the defense—that women outnumbered men? What did it mean that the jurors wanted to rewatch certain footage? And that, less than twenty-four hours before issuing the verdict, some of them were smiling? As he dismissed them, the judge told the jurors that they could talk to the media, if they wanted, about their deliberations. But they did not have to. He said, “Your job is done.”

The courtroom was half filled when the trial began, on November 2nd. By the end, the room was crowded, and a “zoo” had appeared outside. The Racine Journal Times clocked the presence of a man in a “pro-Second Amendment hoodie” and an enthusiastic trial watcher in a red fedora and matching boa. Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who pleaded guilty to pointing an “AR” at Black Lives Matter demonstrators, last year, outside his home in St. Louis, materialized in Kenosha, though he is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Missouri.

The public discourse that surrounded the trial bore little resemblance to the matter of law. A “Free Kyle” contingent saw no reason to hold Rittenhouse accountable for any of his actions in Kenosha. The true villains, in their eyes, were Antifa, the Black Lives Matter movement, and Democrats—whose actions, or lack thereof, forced civilians to defend communities against destruction and violence. Rittenhouse rejected the term “vigilante,” but some of his supporters baldly embraced it. On Wednesday night, the right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza told Laura Ingraham on Fox News, “When you don’t have rule of law, when the cops are nowhere to be found, vigilante justice is the only kind of justice you have.” The chyron read “Rittenhouse Trial Reveals a Culture in Decline.”

If the right saw the verdict as an affirmation of vigilantism, so, too, did their opponents. Moments after the verdict, the political consultant David Axelrod tweeted, “A dangerous, dangerous precedent.” Jake Spence, the state director of Wisconsin Working Families Party, called the outcome “an abject failure” of the criminal-justice system, whose presumed goal is “to promote well-being, public safety and justice for all.” The Atlantic contributor David French, a conservative and an Iraq War veteran who has written about his decision to carry a concealed weapon, recently observed that “one of the symbols of the American hard right is the ‘patriot’ openly carrying an AR-15 or similar weapon.” He described Rittenhouse as “the next step in that progression. He’s the ‘patriot’ who didn’t just carry his rifle; he used it.”

President Joe Biden, whose 2020 campaign used an image of Rittenhouse to disavow Donald Trump’s support of “white supremacists,” commented only that he stood by the verdict. His press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that the President believes “we shouldn’t have, broadly speaking, vigilantes patrolling our communities with assault weapons. We shouldn’t have opportunists corrupting peaceful protest by rioting and burning down the communities they claim to represent, anywhere in the country.”

Rittenhouse did not have formal firearms training, yet Wisconsin’s law allowed him to openly carry a semi-automatic rifle, the type of weapon that is colloquially known as an AR-15. The “AR” stands not for “assault rifle,” as some believe, but rather for ArmaLite Rifle; ArmaLite was the company that manufactured the weapon in the nineteen-fifties, as the Pentagon sought a lightweight alternative to the M14 infantry rifle. As C. J. Chivers explains in “The Gun,” Colt’s firearms division bought the rights to the AR-15 in 1959 and field-tested it in the Vietnam War, promoting its “devastating” ability to penetrate almost anything. Chivers writes that “five to seven soldiers armed with AR-15s produced more firepower and were more dangerous than eleven soldiers provided with M-14s.”

When the patent expired, gun manufacturers mass-produced derivatives. Once the federal assault-weapons ban expired, in 2004, they became the most popular rifles in America. Rittenhouse was armed with Smith & Wesson’s version of the AR-15, which Chivers describes as “small, dark, lean, and synthetically futuristic.” Rittenhouse testified that he wanted an “AR” because he thought it “looked cool.”

In his reflections on the trial, French worried that “a political movement that turns a deadly and ineffective vigilante into a role model is a movement that is courting more violence.” And, in fact, it was far-right figures like the Proud Boys and Marjorie Taylor Greene who appeared most ardent in their support of Rittenhouse. After the verdict was announced, Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina congressman who has advocated “bloodshed” and “storing up some ammunition” in defense of combatting “tyranny,” released a seven-second selfie-video celebrating Rittenhouse’s acquittal. On January 6th, Cawthorn spoke at Trump’s Stop the Steal rally, moments before insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol. In his Rittenhouse video, he told followers, “You have a right to defend yourself! Be armed, be dangerous, and be moral.” Cawthorn, as well as his colleagues Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, expressed interest in offering Rittenhouse an “internship.”

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

RSN: Charles Pierce | The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse Continues to Be Unnervingly Weird

 

 

12 November 21

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

URGENT AND IMMEDIATE APPEAL FOR DONATIONS — We’re 11 days into the month and we still haven’t generated a single good day of fundraising, not one. Regardless of what we say or what we do our readers demand free service. We wish that were possible, but it isn’t and every knows it. Stop. Donate. Please. Seriously.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

Charles Pierce | The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse Continues to Be Unnervingly Weird
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "The judge, Bruce Schroeder, deserves a lot of credit for that."

The judge, Bruce Schroeder, deserves a lot of credit for that.

The prime video on Wednesday from the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two men and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin during the disturbances there that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August 2020, is going to be Rittenhouse’s operatic breakdown under the questioning of defense attorney Mark Richards. Either that, or yet another high-decibel scolding of the prosecutors by Judge Bruce Schroeder.

(A note: while I thought it odd that a 17-year old who’d so coolly turned himself in to police after shooting three people in the middle of a riot would come apart so completely while testifying in his own defense, I would point out that the witness box is a godawful place to be. I have testified twice in my life, both in civil actions in which I was neither plaintiff nor defendant. It’s a goddamn nerve-wracking experience even in the most benign circumstances.)

However, late in the afternoon session, as Rittenhouse was being cross-examined by prosecutor Thomas Binger, the trial veered into a very strange place. Binger, as I noted, has been the target of Judge Schroeder’s ire on several occasions, including earlier on Wednesday, when Schroeder told Binger, flatly, “I don’t believe you when you say you were acting in good faith.” (Binger had attempted to introduce, through a side door, evidence that Schroeder already had refused to admit under other circumstances.) When they came back from recess, the defense accused Binger of trying to incite a mistrial, and then moved for a mistrial with prejudice, which would mean Rittenhouse would walk and then he never could be tried again. Schroeder took the motion “under advisement,” keeping it in his pocket where it could function as a warning against angering him further.

Which is about when things got weird. Binger began to show Rittenhouse drone footage from the night of the shootings that seemed to contradict some of Rittenhouse’s account of what happened. Binger quite naturally asked the detective who was operating the iPad on which the drone footage was being shown to use the pinch-zoom function common to any of us who have an iPhone. The defense leaped to object on the grounds (I think) that “artificial intelligence” in the pinch-zoom changed the pixels according to what Richards called the “logarithms” of the device’s design. The software, Richards argued, might create “what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there.”

Frankly, I didn’t know what in the hell Richards was talking about. Artificial intelligence? Logarithms? (I guess he was going for “algorithms,” but I can’t be sure.) But Judge Schroeder then leaped in and further confused matters. From the New York Times:

That objection set off a 10-minute discussion among the lawyers and Judge Bruce Schroeder. Mr. Binger said zooming in on images shown on iPads, iPhones and other similar devices is a routine part of daily life that all jurors would understand, and that the procedure would not affect the integrity of the image.

He argued that if the defense lawyers thought otherwise, they should have to present expert testimony saying so. But Judge Schroeder said that the burden was on Mr. Binger to prove that zooming would not distort the video. “Is the image in its virginal state?” the judge asked.

(Ed. Note: Oh, dear god in heaven.)

Mr. Binger then asked for an adjournment, but Judge Schroeder denied the request. Instead, he ordered a 15-minute recess and suggested that Mr. Binger could, perhaps, get somebody to testify to the zoomed video’s accuracy “within minutes.”

Were I a cynical fellow, I might conclude that Richards knows better, but that he was counting on the judge being something of a Luddite, which turned out to be a pretty good bet. So the judge gave the prosecution 15 minutes to find an expert to testify that something every baby’s grandma knows to be true is actually the way things are. Right now, that witness box Kyle Rittenhouse is in looks an awful lot like the catbird seat.

READ MORE

GOP Rep. Paul Gosar. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Getty)

GOP Rep. Paul Gosar Posts Anime Video of Him Killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Josephine Harvey, The Huffington Post
Harvey writes: "Rep. Paul Gosar sparked outcry after he shared an edited anime video on Sunday that depicts him swinging swords at President Joe Biden and killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

The far-right Arizona lawmaker posted an anti-immigration meme that appeared to endorse violence against Democrats.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) sparked outcry after he shared an edited anime video on Sunday that depicts him swinging swords at President Joe Biden and killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

The lawmaker, who has been linked to white nationalist and other extremist groups, tweeted the opening credits from the Japanese animated series “Attack on Titan” but altered to show himself in the place of the main character and with the show’s title in Japanese changed to “Attack on Immigrants.”

In the video, Gosar is depicted fighting the show’s “Titans” with far-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). In one scene, Ocasio-Cortez’s face is superimposed on one of the Titans. Gosar slashes its neck and kills it. In another scene, Gosar swings two swords at an enemy with Biden’s face edited onto it.

The clips are intermixed with real videos of U.S. Border Patrol officers corralling migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The words “drugs,” “crime,” “poverty,” “money,” “gangs,” violence” and “trafficking” flashed across the screen along with blood-splatter effects.

The “Attack on Titan” opening credits are often parodied as part of a meme.

Gosar has been a dedicated purveyor of conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election and was named by organizers of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as one of a group of GOP lawmakers who communicated with them in the weeks before the attack, according to a recent Rolling Stone report. Gosar reportedly suggested to organizers that they would be offered a “blanket pardon” by then-President Donald Trump.

Gosar was denounced online for appearing to endorse violence with his Sunday tweet. Ocasio-Cortez responded with a thread noting his white supremacist ties and calling out House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for failing to rein him in.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said Gosar was “more comfortable with violence than voting.”

Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, told The Washington Post in a statement that “we made an anime video” and “everyone needs to relax.”

“The left doesn’t get meme culture. They have no joy. They are not the future. It’s a cartoon. Gosar can’t fly and he does not own any light sabers. Nor was violence glorified. This is about fighting for truth,” she told the Post.

Scores of Twitter users commented that they had reported the video. According to Twitter’s rules, content that glorifies violence is prohibited.

A Twitter spokesperson said the platform had placed a public interest notice on the Tweet as it violated its hateful conduct policy.

“As is standard with this notice, engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Quote Tweet the Tweet, but will not be able to Like, Reply or Retweet it,” the statement said.

The post also appears on Instagram; a Facebook spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

READ MORE

January 6th rioters U.S. Capitol. (photo: Fox)

Appeals Court Temporarily Blocks Jan. 6 Committee From Obtaining Trump White House Records
Dareh Gregorian, Daniel Barnes and Pete Williams, NBC News
Excerpt: "A federal appeals court Thursday granted former President Donald Trump's request to temporarily block the National Archives from turning over his White House records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."

The Jan. 6 committee had been scheduled to get the records Friday.

A federal appeals court Thursday granted former President Donald Trump's request to temporarily block the National Archives from turning over his White House records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The committee had been set to receive the first batch of documents, which lawmakers say is key to their investigation, on Friday. In papers filed Thursday, lawyers for Trump asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to temporarily delay the turnover and to "maintain the status quo" while they push ahead with an expedited appeal.

In a brief unsigned order with no noted dissents, a three-judge panel of the appeals court granted Trump "an administrative injunction" late Thursday and set arguments for Nov. 30.

The order was issued by Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents. Millett and Wilkins were appointed by former President Barack Obama. President Joe Biden appointed Jackson.

Courts often issue such injunctions to allow more time to consider the underlying issues. The order was not a ruling on whether Trump or the House committee has a stronger legal argument.

"The purpose of this administrative injunction is to protect the court's jurisdiction to address appellant's claims of executive privilege and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits," the judges wrote Thursday.

Trump, who has tried to claim executive privilege over the scores of memos, e-mails and records of White House conversations and visits, contends that the records should be kept secret "in perpetuity."

Biden has disagreed and said the National Archives should release the records.

White House counsel Dana Remus told the National Archives in a letter obtained by NBC News that the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was "the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal government since the Civil War" and that Trump's efforts to keep Congress in the dark about what happened "is not in the best interests of the United States."

"Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President's assertion of privilege," Remus wrote.

The House committee and the National Archives did not oppose Trump's request to the appeals court.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied a request from Trump's team to "maintain the status quo" this week, saying "the status quo in this case" is that the National Archives will disclose the documents Friday "absent any intervening court order." The ruling was one of three she issued in the past week refusing Trump's demand to keep his records secret.

"At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President. And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent's view is accorded greater weight," she wrote in a separate 39-page ruling.

"Plaintiff does not acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent President's judgment. His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power 'exists in perpetuity,'" she wrote. "But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President."

Trump has also argued that certain witnesses subpoenaed by the committee should not have to answer questions because of executive privilege, as well. One of them, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, is the subject of a criminal referral to the Justice Department for refusing to cooperate at all.

In a statement earlier Thursday, a lawyer for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows suggested that his client would challenge the committee's requests.

"Contrary to decades of consistent bipartisan opinions from the Justice Department that senior aides cannot be compelled by Congress to give testimony, this is the first President to make no effort whatsoever to protect presidential communications from being the subject of compelled testimony," said the lawyer, George Terwilliger. "Mr. Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict."

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel's chair, responded by threatening to set in motion the same proceedings that led to Bannon's criminal referral if Meadows skips out on Friday's deposition.

"Such willful non-compliance with the subpoena would force the Select Committee to consider invoking the contempt of Congress procedures...as well as the possibility of having a civil action to enforce the subpoena brought against Mr. Meadows in his personal capacity,” he said in a letter to Terwilliger.

READ MORE

Judge Bruce Schroeder. (photo: Sean Krajacic/AP)

Kyle Rittenhouse Judge in Spotlight After Angry Reprimand of Prosecution
Maya Yang, Guardian UK
Yang writes: "The shouting that unfolded on Wednesday in Kyle Rittenhouse's homicide trial has thrust the presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, and his style of unusual lectures and quirky questions in court under the spotlight."

Bruce Schroeder snaps at prosecutors and queries iPad footage as defense rests case in homicide trial

The shouting that unfolded on Wednesday in Kyle Rittenhouse’s homicide trial has thrust the presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, and his style of unusual lectures and quirky questions in court under the spotlight.

Schroeder heavily admonished prosecutors in the trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, questioned the authenticity of some pinch-to-zoom footage presented in evidence, and apparently forgot to silence his phone in court, which at one point rang with a song used at Donald Trump’s rallies.

The trial is in its second week. The defense team rested its case on Thursday afternoon, setting the stage for closing arguments on Monday, and the prosecution said it would seek approval for the jury to consider lesser charges against the teenager on some criminal counts.

Kyle Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense on Wednesday and Thursday amid dramatic scenes in the courtroom.

Rittenhouse, 18, has pleaded not guilty to six charges, including first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree attempted intentional homicide.

He killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, when he shot them with a military-style assault rifle during night-time protests in August 2020, after a white police officer shot a local Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back and gravely wounded him.

The Kenosha county assistant district attorney, James Kraus, on Thursday said he planned to ask the judge to allow the jury to consider lesser charges on the counts involving Huber and Grosskreutz, a move that would lower the burden of proof for conviction.

Meanwhile, proceedings had became highly charged on Wednesday. Rittenhouse sobbed on the stand, the defense requested a mistrial and the judge gestured and shouted angrily at the lead prosecutor, accusing him of asking questions of the defendant that were legally out of bounds.

Schroeder, 75, is Wisconsin’s longest-serving circuit judge. Over the years he has developed a reputation of being a tough jurist.

“He has a reputation for doing what he believes is the right thing and being an independent thinker,” said William Lynch, a retired attorney who served on the Wisconsin board of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advocacy group at the time Schroeder controversially started ordering sex workers to get tested for HIV in the 1980s, which drew scrutiny.

After graduating from Marquette law school in Milwaukee in 1970, Schroeder worked as a prosecutor and was then appointed as circuit judge in 1983 by Wisconsin’s governor at the time. Schroeder, whose current term ends in 2026, has been “in this business for 50 years”, as he said at one point during the Rittenhouse trial’s jury selection.

He is known for delivering lectures that emphasize the importance of civic duty to prospective jurors. Schroeder opened jury selection last week by reaching back to the fall of the Roman empire to stress the gravity of jury duty, saying: “When Rome fell, the world changed dramatically.”

He also spoke of priests blessing trials in which defendants had to place their hands on burning coals or in boiling water – if they “didn’t come out too badly”, that was a sign from God of their innocence.

The judge gave potential jurors trivia questions, echoing the style of the TV quiz show Jeopardy.

One potential juror said he had nasal surgery scheduled. The judge asked him: “What would you rather do: be here with me or have your nose operated on?”

Before the trial, Schroeder ruled that the men shot by Rittenhouse cannot be referred to as “victims” by prosecutors. Defense attorneys may, however, call them “arsonists” or “looters” if they could justify those labels. Prosecutors argued that Schroeder was establishing a double standard.

On Wednesday, Schroeder appeared to sympathize with the defense team after Rittenhouse’s lawyers suggested Apple’s pinch-to-zoom feature on tablets and phones can distort video evidence.

The company’s “iPads … have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three-dimensions and logarithms,” the defense team argued. “This isn’t actually enhanced video. This is Apple’s iPad programming creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there.”

Schroeder responded that the prosecution shouldered the burden of proof that Apple does not use artificial intelligence to manipulate footage.

“You’re the proponent of the exhibit, and you need to tell me that it’s reliable,” he said. The judge also suggested prosecutors find an expert during their brief recess, saying: “Maybe you can get someone to testify on this within minutes? I don’t know.”

During the prosecution’s cross-examination on Wednesday, Schroeder stunned trial viewers as he reprimanded assistant district attorney Thomas Binger for questioning Rittenhouse’s post-arrest silence, which Schroeder has disallowed.

“Don’t get brazen with me,” Schroeder told Binger at one point.

As the defense argued for a mistrial with prejudice over Binger’s actions, Schroeder’s phone suddenly rang to the ringtone of God Bless the USA.

Released in 1984 by Lee Greenwood, the song is popular in conservative circles and often played as Trump’s entrance theme during his rallies.

The trial continues.

READ MORE

Audrey Carter's son, Dwayne Cheeks, was killed in 2018. She said the Baltimore Police Department destroyed some of his belongings after telling her she couldn't get them back. (photo: Andre Chung/NBC News)

Baltimore Crime Victims Say Police Are Illegally Seizing Their Phones
Cyrus Farivar, NBC News
Farivar writes: "On an unusually warm spring evening in the early days of Covid-19, Amber Spencer turned out to celebrate her boyfriend's birthday at a front stoop cookout in East Baltimore."

Lawyers for victims argue these seizures are unconstitutional.

On an unusually warm spring evening in the early days of Covid-19, Amber Spencer turned out to celebrate her boyfriend’s birthday at a front stoop cookout in East Baltimore.

Suddenly, bullets flew, hitting her in the chest. When she turned to run, a bullet struck the back of her head and lodged itself in her skull. Then Spencer lost consciousness.

“When I came to, I had been shot in the head. I asked, ‘Where’s my phone?’ and my mom said, ‘The police took it,’” she said.

Now, Spencer is one of four plaintiffs suing the Baltimore Police Department over what they say are illegal seizures of their personal property, including cash, clothing and cellphones. Two of the other plaintiffs include Damon Gray, a man who was shot in June 2019, and Faye Cottman, a woman who was shot in March 2019. The fourth plaintiff, Audrey Carter, is suing on behalf of her son, who was shot and killed in June 2018. Cottman also specifically alleged that her phone was searched without her consent.

To date, none of the plaintiffs or their loved ones have been able to get their property back even though none of the four is accused of a crime. Gray pleaded guilty to a narcotics charge in August, an unrelated incident.

Spencer and Carter are the first among this group to speak publicly about their case.

The federal lawsuit, a proposed class action, argued there may be thousands of other victims of violent crime who have had their property “unlawfully seized, searched, and destroyed” by the Baltimore Police Department.

“There’s a saying in Baltimore: When you get shot, throw your possessions to your friend. Otherwise, you’ll never see them,” said Tianna Mays, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

NBC News reached out to the Baltimore Police Department, the Baltimore solicitor’s office and the Baltimore City Lodge No. 3 Fraternal Order of Police, which all declined comment.

Calvin Harris, director of communications for the Baltimore city mayor’s office, said in an emailed statement that he would not comment on “anything contained in active litigation.” But attorneys for the Baltimore solicitor’s office wrote in a court filing submitted in September that it’s legal for police to “take possession of the clothing of the victim and all available evidence.”

That’s not how the plaintiffs’ attorney sees it. In fact, in a motion Mays filed Nov. 5, she argued that seizing items like phones lack “evidentiary value.” She noted that “these warrantless searches and wholesale seizures are unconstitutional and are the reason for this lawsuit.”

Experts say that if the lawsuit’s claims are borne out, it would bring more scrutiny to the Baltimore Police Department. In 2016, federal investigators concluded the Baltimore Police Department makes “unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests” among other findings. That Department of Justice report resulted in a formal agreement between Baltimore police and the federal government to reform the city’s practices.

Joe Margulies, a law professor at Cornell University, said presuming the lawsuit’s claims are accurate, the practice of seizing victims’ phones is highly problematic.

“If the allegations are true, the [Baltimore Police Department] is not just seizing but searching phones,” he emailed. “If they seized a defendant’s phone, they’d have to get a warrant before they could search it. Someone will have to explain to me why the victim is entitled to less protection than the accused.”

David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, pointed out that while police procedure allows items to be seized as part of evidence of a crime, “there is no such evidence of that that I can see here,” he emailed.

“And again, even if they can seize it, they can’t search what is inside the device without a warrant, unless there is consent (and there is none here),” he continued, referring to a 2014 Supreme Court case that firmly established the necessity of a warrant to search a cellphone.

Growing losses

After waking up in the hospital, Spencer, 27, who works as a medical assistant, quickly realized the police took her clothes, about $400 in cash and the key to her car, according to the lawsuit.

“Y’all not going to find anything in my phone. I was the one who got shot!” she said, adding that she was never given a receipt or other documentation from the police listing what items they took or why.

After she made multiple attempts to get her items back over the following months, the police department told her it could not hand anything over because of Covid-related protocols, according to the lawsuit.

“My outfit alone was $300,” she said. “I just lost a lot of money that I can never get back. I would like to have my stuff paid for.”

She said she continues to live with the consequences of this random shooting.

“I really don’t go outside; I go to work and I go home, now,” she said. “Anything that drops or pops, I’m like, ‘What was that?!’ I‘m scared to live a normal life. I still have a bullet in my head, so that’s scary too. I’m praying that nothing happens. They said the bullet is lodged in my skull, so it’s not going anywhere. They said removing it would cause more damage than not removing it.”

Sentimental reasons

While Spencer has been waiting for her clothing for over 18 months, Audrey Carter has been waiting nearly twice as long.

In June 2018, Carter’s son, Dwayne Cheeks, was shot to death at a dice game on Germania Avenue, less than a mile from where Spencer would be shot nearly two years later.

At the same time, according to the lawsuit, Baltimore police seized a number of items that were found on Cheeks when he died, including his cellphone, keys, earphones and a lottery ticket.

Almost instantly, Carter began talking to people in the neighborhood where Cheeks was killed, trying to learn more information about who may have taken her son’s life. Meanwhile, she repeatedly asked if the Baltimore Police Department would return any of her son’s possessions, only to be told the department could not do so as it might hinder the investigation, she said in an interview.

“I said ‘OK, fine, if that’s what you need to do,’” she said. “‘I don’t want it back other than for any other reason than it was his.’”

Finally, by December 2019, she was able to arrange a meeting with a Baltimore police officer to get back some of the items. But then Carter learned much of her son’s final possessions had accidentally been destroyed, she said.

Carter said she was devastated. She wanted these items for sentimental reasons and hoped to pass them along to Cheeks’ children. She reached out to the Baltimore Police Department’s evidence control unit head and demanded an explanation.

“They say, ‘We sent you out a letter,’” she said. “I said ‘OK, I never got a letter.’”

Carter said she was told the letter had first been sent to Cheeks himself.

“I said, ‘Do you understand that’s my son? You’re sending a letter to my son at his old address!’” she said. “So he said the letter came back. Of course it came back, because [my son] has passed, he’s not going to accept the letter! I said, ‘It doesn’t make any sense that you would send a letter to the deceased!’”

In January 2019, federal prosecutors first named Correy Cawthorn as a suspect in the killing of Cheeks. Court records show that in February 2019, Cawthorn pleaded not guilty to the charges. Cawthorn and his co-defendants were also named in a superseding indictment returned in May 2021, when federal prosecutors added new defendants. Federal authorities alleged Cawthorn was a high-level member in the “Triple C” gang, which they said was involved in drug trafficking and is responsible for 18 murders.

But even now, Carter said, other than the cash Cheeks had on him when he died, she has been unable to get back anything the Baltimore Police Department still holds that belonged to her son.

“As far as I know, they should still have his watch, his wallet and his phone,” she said.

READ MORE

People hold Cuban flags in support of Cubans demonstrating against their government, in Hialeah, Florida, last July. (photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty)

Cuba Accuses US of Coordinating Upcoming Civil Liberties Protest
Lexi Lonas, The Hill
Lonas writes: "Cuba is accusing the U.S. of coordinating a civil liberties protest that is set to take place on November 15."

Cuba is accusing the U.S. of coordinating a civil liberties protest that is set to take place on Nov. 15.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in a meeting with diplomats on Wednesday the U.S. is helping plan a protest the Cuban government has forbidden, alleging that the U.S. is trying to destabilize the country, Reuters reported.

"U.S. policy ... is doomed to failure. It is unfeasible. It hasn't worked for 60 years. It does not work now ... and it will not work in the future," Rodriguez said.

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price addressed the accusation back in October, saying the U.S. is supportive of the Cuban people.

“But what we have seen in Cuba since July 11th, what I suspect we will see mid-next month in Cuba, is a demonstration not of the desires of the United States Government,” Price said. “What we have seen, what we will say – what we will see is a manifestation of the unmet needs, of the unmet aspirations of the Cuban people, and the Cuban people’s clear attribution of responsibility for those unmet needs and unmet aspirations to the Cuban Government.”

The Cuban government has already warned the leader of Archipelago, the Facebook group leading the protest, against going through with the demonstration, which the group's leader says is for civil liberties and human rights.

"We are not mercenaries, nor are we receiving orders from anyone," Yunior García Aguilera, leader of the Archipelago group, said after meeting with government prosecutors. "We are openly demonstrating a difference of opinion.”

Rodriguez also accused Facebook of "altering logarithms, altering the geolocation mechanism to simulate the massive presence in Cuba of people with accounts that are known to reside outside our country, primarily in Florida and in the U.S. territory,” according to Reuters.

He said Facebook violated international law and could be sued for “practices against Cuba.”

Archipelago says that more than half of its 31,501 Facebook members live in Cuba, per Reuters.

The upcoming protest comes after huge civil liberties demonstrations broke out in Cuba over the summer, during which a human rights group documented systematic abuses the government allegedly committed against protesters.

The U.S. House recently passed a resolution supporting the Cuban protesters and the upcoming protest on Nov. 15. Forty Democrats and no Republicans voted against its passage.

The Hill has reached out to Facebook for comment.

READ MORE

The USS Theodore Roosevelt conducts a training exercise in the Pacific in 2017. (photo: U.S. Navy)

Military Pollution Is the Skeleton in the West's Climate Closet
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye
Cook writes: "Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their 'defense' spending."

Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their 'defence' spending

World leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the COP26 summit in a bid to demonstrate how they are belatedly getting to grips with the climate crisis. Agreements to protect forests, cut carbon and methane emissions and promote green tech are all being hammered out in front of a watching world.

Western politicians, in particular, want to emerge from the summit with their green credentials burnished, proving that they have done everything in their power to prevent a future global temperature rise of more than 1.5C. They fear the verdict of unhappy electorates if they come back empty-handed.

Climate scientists are already doubtful whether the pledges being made go far enough, or can be implemented fast enough, to make a difference. They have warned that drastic action has to be taken by the end of this decade to avert climate catastrophe.

But the visible activity at the summit hides a much starker reality. The very nations proclaiming moral leadership in tackling the climate crisis are also the ones doing most to sabotage a meaningful agreement to reduce humanity’s global carbon footprint.

A photo from the opening of COP26 showed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the summit’s host, warmly greeting US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But rather than fete them, we should treat this triumvirate as the big villains of the climate talks.

Their armed forces are the most polluting on the planet - and the goal at COP26 is to keep that fact a closely guarded secret.

Hidden from view

US expenditure on its military far outstrips that of any other country - except for Israel, when measured relative to population size. Although the UK trails behind, it still has the fifth largest military budget in the world, while its arms manufacturers busily supply weapons to countries others have shunned.

The US military alone is estimated to have a larger carbon footprint than most countries. It is widely assumed to be the world’s largest institutional consumer of crude oil.

And emissions from the West’s militaries and arms makers appear to be growing each year rather than shrinking - though no one can be certain because they are being actively hidden from view.

Washington insisted on an exemption from reporting on, and reducing, its military emissions at the Kyoto summit, 24 years ago. Unsurprisingly, everyone else jumped on that bandwagon.

Since the Paris summit of 2015, military emissions have been partially reported. But all too often the figures are disguised - lumped in with emissions from other sectors, such as transport.

And emissions from overseas operations - in the case of the US, 70 percent of its military activity - are excluded from the balance sheet entirely.

Conflicts and wars

Most of Europe has refused to come clean, too. France, with the continent’s most active military, reports none of its emissions.

According to research by Scientists for Global Responsibility, the UK’s military emissions were three times larger than those it reported - even after supply chains, as well as weapons and equipment production, were excluded. The military was responsible for the overwhelming majority of British government emissions.

And new technology, rather than turning the military green, is often making things much worse.

The latest fighter jet developed by the US, the F-35, is reported to burn 5,600 litres of fuel an hour. It would take 1,900 cars to guzzle a similar amount of fuel over the same period.

Norway, like many other countries, has been queuing up to get its hands on this new-generation jet. According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, the total emissions by the Norwegian military over the next decade will rise by 30 percent as a result of its F-35 purchases alone.

As well as discounting the environmental harm caused by military equipment procurement and supply chains, countries are also excluding the significant impacts of conflicts and wars.

Each year of the US occupation of Iraq that began in 2003, for example, is conservatively estimated to have generated emissions equivalent to putting an additional 25m cars on the road.

Military spending up

Unlike the farming and logging industries, or the manufacturing industries, or the fossil fuel industries, efforts to curb the growth in military spending - let alone reverse it - are off the table at the COP26 summit.

And for that, Washington has to take the major share of the blame.

Its “defence” budget already comprises about 40 percent of the $2tn spent annually on militaries worldwide. China and Russia - ostensibly the two bogeymen of the COP26 summit - lag far behind.

The government of Boris Johnson unveiled last year what it called “the biggest programme of investment in British defence since the end of the Cold War”. Britain is no outlier. After a short-lived “peace dividend” caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union, global military expenditure has been on an almost continuous upward trend since 1998, led by the US.

Paradoxically, the upturn began about the time western politicians began paying lip service to tackling “climate change” at the Kyoto summit.

US military spending has been rising steadily since 2018. It is set to continue doing so for at least another two decades - way past the deadline set by climate scientists for turning things around.

The same global upward trend has been fed by a surge in military expenditure by Middle Eastern countries - notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE - since 2013. That appears to reflect two trends rooted in Washington’s changing approach to the region.

First, as it has withdrawn its overstretched occupation forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has increasingly outsourced its military role to wealthy client states in this oil-rich region.

And second, as Israel and the Gulf states have been encouraged to forge closer military and intelligence ties against Iran, these same Gulf states have been allowed to play military catch-up with Israel. Its famed “qualitative military edge” is being gradually eroded.

Propping up this Middle East arms spree is the UK, which has been exporting to the Saudis, and the US, which heavily subsidises Israel’s military industries.

Power competition

All this means that, while western politicians promise to cut emissions at COP26, they are actually busy preparing to increase those emissions out of view. Ultimately, the problem is that little can be done to green our militaries, either substantively or through a greenwashing makeover. The military’s rationale is neither to be sustainable nor to be kind to the planet.

The arms manufacturers’ business model is to offer clients - from the Pentagon to every tinpot dictator - weapons and machines that are bigger, better or faster than their competitors. Aircraft carriers must be larger. Fighter jets quicker and more agile. And missiles more destructive.

Consumption and competition are at the heart of the military mission, whether armies are waging war or marketing their activities as purely “defensive”.

“Security”, premised on a fear of neighbours and rivals, can never be satiated. There is always another tank, plane or anti-missile system that can be purchased to create greater “deterrence”, to protect borders more effectively, to intimidate an enemy.

And war provides even greater reasons to consume more of the planet’s finite resources and wreak yet more harm on ecosystems. Lives are taken, buildings levelled, territories contaminated.

The UK has 145 military bases in 42 countries, securing what it perceives to be its “national interests”. But that is dwarfed by more than 750 US military bases spread over 80 countries. Shuffling off this energy-hungry power projection around the globe will be much harder than protecting forests or investing in green technology.

The US and its western allies would first have to agree to relinquish their grip on the planet’s energy resources, and to give up policing the globe in the interests of their transnational corporations.

It is precisely this full-spectrum power competition - economic, ideologic and military - that propelled us into the current climate disaster. Tackling it will require looking much deeper into our priorities than any leader at COP26 appears ready to do.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611