The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people during rioting in Wisconsin in 2020, killing two, has been a disaster for the prosecution since day one. What I am assuming had to be their star witness, Gaige Grosskreutz, effectively sent the prosecution's case to the bottom for brunch with Davey Jones.
Though now a moot point, given he was forced by defense counsel to admit he gave false testimony, it nonetheless pays to consider Grosskreutz's self-discredited central claim that he was shot while surrendering.
Grosskreutz initially claimed to have been raising his hands in surrender, his pistol admittedly still in his grasp. Let us examine that for sense, looking to the hypothetical case where the claim was not a lie. Would Rittenhouse have been wrong to shoot?
If one is surrendering, they do not have a weapon in their hands. So long as they remain armed, they are not in fact surrendering, but must be taken to be lying. Criminals, for example, lie all the time - it is one of their stocks in trade. When in a circumstance of effective warfare, a defender cannot afford the luxury of assuming that an armed opponent poses anything but a clear and present danger to life and limb, no matter the opponent's protests of "I surrender". Grosskreutz was armed, was not to my knowledge issuing a verbal surrender message, and claimed to have been raising his arms. This does not in any reasonable way convey surrender to outside parties.
The most basic midbrain sense tells us that when surrendering, one relinquishes all visible control of weaponry; that you will not so much as appear as a threat. If you do not wish to be targeted as an imminent danger to others, you empty your hands prior to making any other bodily gestures and hope for as much distance between yourself and anything that might be viewed as a weapon, as possible. It requires no feat of intellect to figure this out, first time, in situo.
Some will argue that if someone is sufficiently frightened or nervous, they might not come to that sense immediately. Let us assume it is so, doubtful as it may seem to anyone with a lick of sense. In that case, you have no business being in the situation in which you have voluntarily inserted yourself. I am confident in my assumption that nobody forced Grosskreutz to enter a riot zone, armed with a handgun, and to join in the felonious acts of his compatriot rioters. It also appears that nobody forced Grosskreutz to discharge his weapon in the midst of an active and ongoing riot, with no clear (or even claimed) defensive purpose. Grosskreutz's discharging of his weapon could not have been reasonably taken by Rittenhouse as anything less or other than an immediate threat to his own life, given that Rittenhouse was being actively hunted by several armed assailants across lines of battle that at that time were very clearly defined.
We therefore see with good reason that Grosskreutz was there in concert with the rest of the rioters, was armed with a handgun, and was at least willing to cause unjust harm to innocents. This much cannot be denied with any credibility.
We also see that if you voluntarily place yourself in such a situation, minus the wherewithal to handle adverse contingencies which arise, that you make yourself the victim of your own incapacity when things go awry. If you are thereby killed or maimed, the results can, at most, be chalked up to a tragic confluence of unfortunate choices. In the kindest case, Darwin will have harvested your deficient self and there is nobody to blame but sad circumstance. More likely, however, full onus rests with you for having made so poor a series of choices in the context of your inadequate nerves, and that you thereby effectively ended up committing suicide by stupidity, or being maimed by equal virtue.
That Rittenhouse shot Grosskreutz was fully justified even if what the latter testified had been the truth. Raising your arms in surrender with a gun in your hand is tantamount to begging to be treated as a clear and present threat, the logical result belonging to the fool and nobody else.
There are those, apparently mostly of a "left" bent so to speak, who either cannot or will not see things from the standpoint of someone defending their life from imminent apparent destruction. I have observed that such people generally look at such situations only from the standpoint of the one they view as being the victim, in this case Grosskreutz. "He was surrendering!" will be their emotionally charged justification for improperly seeing Kyle Rittenhouse sent to prison. What they fail to acknowledge is a young man's position as being hunted down by a mob of wild rioters.
Even if Grosskreutz was truthful in his initial claims, put yourself in the place of Rittenhouse, standing before someone who had been chasing him with a handgun, had discharged that handgun without just cause, and was now raising that weapon in concert with utterances of "I surrender" (the latter of which was not the case, but I am purposely trying to make the best case in Grosskreutz's favor). Which gesture is one to heed, the spoken word whose veracity cannot be verified in the tiny split of a second required to make a decision, or the act of raising a hand with a gun in it? There is no question as to the correct answer here, which is the latter.
It may be seen as an unfortunate feature of being human, that we are not capable of discerning intent in the ways that some people assume. In this case, those who think Rittenhouse should not have shot Grosskreutz are sadly mistaken and their goodly intentions toward him and their tilted ideas of justice hold no validity in the matter. Even if we assume surrender, Grosskreutz's actions would utterly belie that intention, indicating very much its opposite and thereby presenting Rittenhouse with the reasonably perceived and very immediate choice of shoot or stand idly to be shot, maimed, and likely killed.
That is the best case in favor of Grosskreutz and it fails with stern misery to bolster the prosecution's proceeding. It does, in fact, demolish it in utter totality.
There is a lesson in all of this, and it is an old one: if you do not want to become a victim of warfare, the first thing you decide is not to go willingly into the fray. It is no great stretch to assume that Grosskreutz holds sufficient intellect (it doesn't require much) to come to the reasonable presumption that there would be lively action that night. Taking a sidearm would seem to suggest his recognition of that fact. He willfully placed himself in a position from which he could have removed himself at any moment by simply walking away. He chose to do otherwise and then engaged in positive acts against another human being for which he was rightly taken to task. There is no possible argument, short of proof of brain lesions to the point, that could in any way excuse his behavior, and even then his having been shot by Rittenhouse could at most be chalked up as a sad tragedy.
Let Rittenhouse be acquitted, come what may. Let the truth, particularly as here exposed for all to see, serve as an object lesson to those whose stunted views on such matters stand in dire need of correction. If one does not wish to be injured, then threaten no injury. Better yet, remove yourself from dangerous situations. Stay home; have a beer; read a book; chase your girlfriend around the kitchen table. Do anything, but do not join a rioting mob because that is asking for trouble that nobody needs and nobody in their right mind wants.
Be well, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.
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