Except Binger (the prosecution) was pushing the implication that Kyle's silence was unusual and for an innocent person not what normally happens because innocent people want to be heard and have the world know they're innocent right? That's how it works in the social media age right? or some such BS which is why the judge admonished him
It is a little unusual to do the media interview circuit while also refusing to testify, yeah. But that's irrelevant. The only relevant bit is that nobody's rights were actually infringed, so there's no grounds for a mistrial.
Agreed. But the whole judge asking the jury to leave and chewing out the prosecutor was to prevent such from happening because the prosecutor was walking directly into grounds for mistrial.
Eh, possibly. I still have a hard time equating simply
asking somebody whether this was the first time they were speaking about something with insinuating that it's wrong to do so. He gave no value judgement.
Because he wasn't shot in the back because he had his back turned, he was shot in the back because he was coming in lower than shoulder height for Rittenhouse and leaned in towards him, like one would expect from a lunge or tackle. The same bullet hit his back, lung, and liver.
Think about the angle of the shot, and imagine what the line of fire looks like. Like imagine drawing a straight line that goes through Rosenbaum's liver, lung, and upper back and then into Rittenhouse's gun barrel and what that implies about the relative position and movement of the people involved. Rittenhouse is standing holding the gun. Rosenbaum doesn't have his back turned, he's lunging at him and at the moment Rittenhouse fires he's lower than Rittenhouse's shoulder, meaning Rittenhouse is aiming slightly down. Shot goes from gun barrel to upper back to lung to liver.
I have thought about it. If that's the result of a "lunge", then Rittenhouse would have to be firing almost directly downwards, in a highly unrealistic and awkward position, to hit his
back. And adding the assumption that a first on-target shot apparently had no impact on stopping the guy. And then even after that, we have... two more shots?
It seems far,
far more likely that one nonlethal shot stopped him, and then Rittenhouse-- the guy who openly expressed
a desire to shoot looters, prior to any of this-- kept firing.
The same applies to male defendants, except the gap is much larger for gender than for race. The only way Rittenhouse would be expected to be more likely to be convicted based on his demographics is if he were both male and black.
The same does indeed apply for male defendants. It's preferable for juries to be balanced/ representative in terms of gender as well. This doesn't counter my point, it's more like a complimentary addendum.
...and neither generally gets exactly the jury they want and jury decisions have to be unanimous, or you have a hung jury. In the case of a hung jury, it's a mistrial and the prosecutor can try again. It wasn't a mistrial in this case, the jurors unanimously decided he was not guilty.
Except in this case, it wasn't just "neither getting the jury they want". It was a jury
heavily skewed in one direction, a direction which favoured the defendant.
