Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man. On Friday November 19th, 2021, 18 year old Rittenhouse learned that he was found innocent on all counts charged against him, including murder.
Rittenhouse was accused of: murdering two men, shooting another, and endangering many in a Kenosha, Wisconsin court house. Rittenhouse claimed self defense from day one, while the left and mainstream media called him a “white supremacist murderer”. Joe Biden ran a campaign ad about how Rittenhouse was a danger to the safety of minorities in the United States.
There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020
When all is said and done, Rittenhouse left that court house as a free man. Americans can now rest easy knowing that the justice system worked. The justice system did what it was designed to do. Here’s what I learned during the Rittenhouse trial.
The Justice System Worked
My faith in the American justice system has been utterly restored. Unlike the Derek Chauvin case in Minnesota, Rittenhouse had a fighting chance. The video evidence was on Rittenhouse’s side. Chauvin’s situation came down to mass hysteria from the media. Chauvin may have been guilty of manslaughter or reckless endangerment, but he for sure was not (in my opinion) guilty of murdering George Floyd.
With Rittenhouse, it was obvious that he was in clear and imminent danger. The prosecutor, who did a poor job at attempting to present a case to the jury, tried painting Rittenhouse as a thug who was only in Kenosha to cause problems. The point of whether Rittenhouse should have gone to Kenosah or not is up for debate, but it is not against the law to travel to Kenosha. It is not against the law to defend property and life. It is not against the law to make yourself available to provide medical treatment to victims of violence during a riot.
Rittenhouse was painted as a murderer from the moment the news of him shooting people in Kenosha broke. It was going to be difficult for Rittenhouse to get a fair and impartial jury. The jury pool had witnessed their town be burned down. Their town had been struck with a high profile police shooting. And then, according to the media, a white supremacist walked into their town with an illegal AR-15, opening fire on a bunch of innocent protesters.
According to the media, Rittenhouse was a racist for trying to stop a bunch of white liberals from tearing down a city. According to the media, Rittenhouse was a proud boy who wanted to see people get shot. According to the media, Rittenhouse was out for blood. And with that lean from the media, it is surprising that the jury found Rittenhouse not guilty.
Every commentator, from Ben Shapiro to Megyn Kelly, thought the jury was either going to be a hung jury (meaning no verdict could be reached), or a conviction, because of how long the jury took. The jury took four days to come to a verdict.
In all honesty, I was worried. I was worried that a juror would want to convict simply on the merit that they didn’t want Kenosha to burn once again. Their possible left-leaning tendencies could have cost Rittenhouse his life. There was fear that in order to keep the peace, the jury would convict.
What the Rittenhouse trial and acquittal taught me is this: The American system works. The jury did their job and it worked.