Comments On Rittenhouse Case

 Ronald L. Sullivan on Rittenhouse case

https://quillette.com/2021/11/23/the-rittenhouse-trial-a-legal-scholar-responds/

My Comment As Written To A Friend:

“Where I fell out with Sullivan is in his rather blithe, and in my view unearned, following assumption:

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…The Rittenhouse trial did not take place in a vacuum. Indeed, the event that brought Rittenhouse to Kenosha was a Black Lives Matter march, protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake, a young African American male. Many read this verdict as an indictment on race relations in the country. They contend that this is yet another example of white people manifesting their privileged status in America—so privileged that they can kill with impunity. They punctuate this argument with claim that if Rittenhouse were black, he would have been convicted.

On this last claim, I wholeheartedly agree. If Rittenhouse had been black, he most assuredly would have been convicted…

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I don’t see how this trial and its verdict indict race relations in America. Jacob Blake was a criminal thug, the shooting of whom was cleared by an investigation into it, the cop who shot him placed back on active duty.

I see no white privilege involved anywhere here. There may have been an intended BLM protest in Kenosha in the wake of shooting Blake, but what eventuated were nights of criminal mayhem, arson and assault, most of which, if not all, carried out by white criminals of the type Rittenhouse shot in self defence. 

Nowhere in all that attended these events leading up to the trial itself and its resolution is there a lesson, let alone a sub text, that privileged whites “can kill with impunity.”

There is no warrant for assuming that a black Rittenhouse would have been convicted. That is errant speculation and it befouls Sullivan’s subsequent arguments proceeding from this assumption.  I find the assertion of this assumption a jarring distraction, especially given the cool, lucid, fair minded preceding legal analysis of the actual criminal law issues….”

My Friend L.C.‘s Comment:

I didn't get through most of the legal analysis, Itzik -- just too long for me, I'm afraid -- but he lost me early on, on his moral analysis. 

This much I agree with: that we look for more than merely "procedural justifications" for a particular law -- we also say it should "comport with our intuitive sense of moral blameworthiness". But that requires that we have a rational, not merely politically tribal, sense of what constitutes moral blameworthiness, and Sullivan, like so many under the spell of the Woke, doesn't. We can see that early on, when he presents the contrasting views of R's blameworthiness. On the blame side he cites irrelevancies like the crossing of a state line (which apparently he lives on the border of), distorts his motives (he wasn't there as a counter-protestor as far as I know, but rather as a defender of life and property), and omits (deliberately, I'd say) facts such as that relatives and friends lived in the area (only 20 minutes away). You might say he's just presenting the views of the blamers, whether or not they're right, but then you look at what he suppresses in his (un)"balanced" presentation of the other side, and you can see that he's stacking the deck: no mention at all of the fact that large numbers of the so-called "protestors" were in fact rioters, arsonists, looters, and exactly people "looking for trouble" . Without acknowledging that obvious, in-your-face point, then, sure, R looks like just a swaggering, gun-toting kid at best, and his whole side of the case falls into the merely procedural "he had a right" argument. That's like arguing that anyone trying to help others "has a right" to do so, but it entirely misses the point at issue in assessing moral blame or praise. 

So that gives away his game, I think, and it's in his conclusion that the moral rot is really exposed. That's where he bemoans the "unintended consequence" of relevant gun rights being "a Wild Wild West mentality where citizens feel emboldened to engage in private law enforcement" -- effacing the reality that it was the withdrawal of any effective official law protection that had created a real Wild West situation -- not "mentality" -- in the first place, where citizens feel forced, not to engage in private law enforcement, but simple to protect themselves. It's that deliberate erasure that is disgusting, and certainly not the celebration at the acquittal of someone  morally as well as legally blameless. But with some editing, his concluding paragraph stands up -- forget honoring these particular dead, and change the focus of the last two sentences: "Our society cannot and will not survive a polity that permits armed children rioters, looters, arsonists, and thugs to walk the streets and kill [or threaten to kill] with impunity. Our moral sensibilities push in a different direction, and we must take action to ensure that our moral sensibilities are adequately reflected in our positive law."