It was pleasingly entertaining to watch judge Bruce Schroeder excoriate the prosecutor in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. To witness a judge properly calling the prosecutor on the carpet for their misconduct before a jury seems the rarity these days.
That aside, one video clip shows prosecutor Binger asking Rittenhouse whether the defendant believed that terminal force in the defense of property was justified, asking the same question over and over several times with different examples of property in each separate case. The tacit assumption underlying each of these questions, of course, was that it was not. For example, and to wit:
"Is it justified to use deadly force to stop someone from lighting a dumpster fire?"
"No."
"Is it justified to use deadly force to stop someone from lighting an empty automobile on fire?"
"No."
And so it went for several more iterations.
There are at least three serious errors in all of this.
Firstly, the prosecution should never have asked such questions, most especially given the tone that clearly connoted with dishonest tacitness that it was never justified to use deadly force to defend "property". I noted that Binger neglected to ask Rittenhouse whether it was ever OK to use deadly force to stop someone from setting fire to an empty house, or perhaps more illustratively, a large office building.
It is clear that there are cases where the use of deadly force is well justified in defense of inanimate property. Would police just stand idly by as the city's fire-bug-du-jour lit ablaze an empty Empire State Building? These days, who can say for certain, but there was at least a time not very long ago when police could be expected shoot a man stone dead in their tracks, were it clear to them that the suspect were about to set even a small house ablaze, were there no reasonable opportunity to stop them by non-terminal means.
It is also clear that killing someone in defense of a piece of chewing gun from being taken without permission may not be justifiable, making special note of "may". I will avoid the overly strict philosophical discussion for the sake of mercy on readers.
These two extreme examples illustrate with good force and clarity that terminal defense of some property is in fact justifiable, while that of others might not be. This perforce implies a border of some sort between the cases of acts justified and those that are not. It is also intuitively clear that this border is no bright line in the sand, but rather a hazily-defined grey area where justifiability turns very much on context, this being a very critically important element of the issue. Context is often king. What is just in one context may not be in another. This fact is also completely ignored by the prosecution, further bolstering my assertion of incompetence, vicious corruption, or possibly both.
It is also clear that defense of life and limb is also that of property, and is eminently justifiable at the lethal extreme. As to the specificity of "limb", it cannot be credibly argued that one's arm, for example, is not their property. The arm of a living being is integral to its living self. It therefore follows perforce that such a limb is in fact the property of the being to which it is so intimately, naturally, and properly connected.
Would this prosecutor, or anyone else for that matter, assert that one may not use deadly force to prevent some third party from causing its destruction, removal, or other uninvited injury, regardless of how trivial it has been assumed to be? Would they assert that one is obliged to allow another human being to so much as touch them, uninvited? That is the direct and unavoidable implication of any claim that one is not justly entitled to employ deadly force in defense of limb, as well as of life itself, for defense of limb may very well prove itself to be defense of one's very life in certain cases.
If, for example, a stranger makes it clear that they intend on using the hatchet in their hand to remove your arm, but nothing more, the threat to limb nonetheless constitutes a reasonable threat to life. Therefore, the use of lethal force in defense of limb is absolutely justifiable there.
It is further made clear in these simple examples that either prosecutor Binger is incompetent beyond all forgiveness, or he is dishonestly employing the tactical use of tacit partial-truths and outright lies to sway the jury's emotions pursuant to prosecutorial victory; truth, logic, facts, and justice be damned.
Secondly, the implicit assumption that "property" and "life" are separate issues was not, to my knowledge, established. I've seen no hint of a reference to the prosecution's use of expert testimony to establish the veracity of the idea that one's life is not property, which I must assume should be a critical element of the fact patterns as part of the very basis of the prosecution's case. And yet, Binger implicitly (and possibly explicitly in other instances of which I am not aware) asserts as fact that property and life are separate things, with the clear intention of disparaging any lethal act in defense of the former. This strongly appears to be a desperation stab at trapping Rittenhouse into admitting that he believed that it is justifiable to take lethal action in defense of "mere" property, vis-à-vis infinitely precious life. Binger's drama-queen act aside, his brand of lie is most dangerous not just to Kyle Rittenhouse, but to every soul living under the umbrella (some might say "pall") of American jurisprudence. To allow this tacit assumption to stand on its own, and in this manner, is to place every decent man in America behind the cross-hairs of any and potentially every fool prosecutor seeking another notch in his quest for professional and perhaps even social advancement at the cost of the destruction of innocent lives, the preciousness and sanctity of which they otherwise sing praises like canaries on cocaine.
Perhaps this point is too subtle for some, but I would nevertheless ask where was the judge in all of that? I like this judge, and I understand that being human he cannot be expected to see in real time that which I have the luxury of careful contemplation at whatever pace I may require to get things right. But it stands nonetheless that allowing such poisoned barbs to pass unchallenged poses potentially serious threats to all, downrange. Seeing only snippets, I cannot say that the judge missed this point, but neither do I know that he didn't.
One's life is in fact his "First Property". In my opinion, both the judge and the defense should have called out the prosecution on this absurd, irrelevant, and dangerous line of questioning, if indeed they failed to do so. I cannot tell because all I saw was an edited clip that did not provide all the details. I nonetheless make this an issue precisely because it is so centrally important to the fabric of proper human relations, and if I do so redundantly, I say better that than to allow it to slip by, unnoticed and unchallenged.
Thirdly, Rittenhouse's responses of "no" to each query may not have been the correct ones to give, though I cannot assert this for certain in terms of the practicalities of testimony before a clearly and extremely hostile prosecutor who makes no secret of his attitude toward the truth v. winning. I am, after all, not a lawyer.
In the luxury of my unthreatened liberty, I feel that Rittenhouse's responses of "no" to each of the prosecutor's queries about whether lethal force is justified, loaned validity to the grossly incorrect assumption that property is not justifiably defended with such non equivocation. We have made it clear that in some cases it most certainly justified in using lethal force to defend property.
It may be that the philosophically more pure responses to the prosecutor's inappropriate questions might open the door to opportunities that one does not want to give his accuser, who is clearly on a fishing expedition in the desperate hope of hooking something, anything, that might save his clearly failing case. I can see how defense counsel may have instructed Rittenhouse to respond to any such question with "no", keeping things as simple as possible. But I also see a potential hazard there in that a jury may ask that if it is admittedly not justifiable to use lethal for in defense of property, why then was Rittenhouse entered into the fray with a rifle? Was it not to defend property of others in Kenosha? Was it only to defend the lives of people?
Perhaps these points have all been made clear - I do not as yet know. But these are some of the pitfalls of allowing such issues to remain either unestablished with no clear answers, or even just partially so. As long as any elements of such issues remain unanswered, the danger always lurks that people will fill in the blanks on their own with potentially disastrous outcomes. Not everyone is competent to settle such issues on their own and without help and some direction. Great injustice can be served most unintentionally.
Regardless of how this trial ultimately resolves, the questions raised here remain of central importance to the proper liberties of Freemen. These questions should be asked and answered properly by the courts such that precedent is clearly set, that no prosecutor in the land is thenceforth able to claim ignorance when they improperly bring severe charges against someone on this basis. Judges should be dismissing such cases with prejudice and should be holding in a cell without bail any prosecutor who would dare engage in such professional misconduct, pending the appropriate charges and trial.
These seemingly subtle and at times even trivial points of philosophy should never be improperly weighed as for their significance, especially in a land where the institutions of jurisprudence are as terribly broken as they are here in America such that absurdity tends to rule, leaving little to no room for actual justice.
Be well, and as always please accept my best wishes.
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