EP. 66 - IS KYLE RITTENHOUSE GUILTY

Hi, this is Colin McCallin. Thank you for listening. Please do us a favor and leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes. Thank you. [inaudible]

Welcome to is this legal here, your house attorneys calling the Colin and Russell Hebets.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to, is this legal? My name's Colin McCallin. I am alongside my partner Russel Hebets. Hello. Hello everyone. And we got another fresh jam packed episode for you. From sunny Denver Colorado. You know, we've been doing a fair amount of true crime lately because there's been a lot of it in the news. And we're about to talk about a case that is 100% squarely in news right now. The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is going on. We're going to set the stage for that in a minute, Russ, but this is one of those cases that got a lot of media attention last year cases currently in trial. This is a murder trial and that's what we're going to be talking about today, right? That's right. We're going to go through what he's charged with. We're going to go through the, how the charges apply to the people who were killed or injured in this incident.

And we're going to let you know what we think about those charges and what we think about the likelihood or lack of likelihood of him being convicted. Yeah. We're going to try and do that as legally and as objectively as possible as we always try and do, although I'll tell you what this case like. So many of the other ones that we have covered is just peppered with a lot of raw emotion about this. I mean, this is one, this is a case that has some political undertones somewhat polarizing, depending on your view of when self-defense is appropriate or not. So I think you'll see, as we start to talk about this case, this case really has a lot going on and we'll have to see how it all shakes out, but let's set the stage. Shall we Rus Colin, give us a rundown for anyone who has not followed this incident when it happened, give us a rundown, just top-line version of what happened.

Yeah. And this there's a lot out there you can consume in this case, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm going to keep it top level, but essentially last summer, August 25th, 2020, to be specific there was unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There was a police shooting just a couple of days before of an African-American a man an African-American man. His name was Jacob Blake. He was shot. He was an unarmed man who was shot by the police. And there were protests in the wake of that shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And one of the people who went to go to this, I guess, scene of unrest in Kenosha was 17 year old, Kyle Rittenhouse. There's, it's one of those situations where you have protestors protesting the death of Mr. Blake. But then there was a call to arms over Facebook because there was a concern that these protesters were going to loot or damage businesses and Kadesha.

So there was also a call for people to come and defend these businesses and kind of help the police out, right. Was this law enforcement making this call? No, this was not. And that's, I think it's important to remember. It's not like the Kenosha police department or their Sheriff's department put out an APB saying, Hey, if you know, if you have a gun, come help us out. Now this is, this is a Facebook militia group, by the way, if you ever see a call to arms that says it's from your local police, it is not true because the local police will never put out a call for citizens to come help them do their job. Yes, but nevertheless, young Kyle Rittenhouse, who again is 17 year old years old, he's a minor. He illegally obtains an AR 15 assault rifle, and he has his mom dropped him off at this protest where he ends up killing two people and shooting a third severing his bicep.

And so this man is on trial right now for murder of these two individuals as well as for assault on the man that he shot and trials going on right now, we're going to kind of unpack this. He has endorsed the defense of self-defense Russ. This case is going on as we speak, he is currently testifying in his own defense. And so he's currently being cross-examined. So by the time you all out there, listen to this podcast, we may be at a spot where we're waiting for a verdict and we may, we may have a verdict. This, this case is going lightening fast, Russ. I mean, to put this in perspective, the OJ Simpson trial which was a double homicide that took nine months to try this case might wrap up evidence in two weeks, but this being a double homicide, it's pretty amazing.

I mean, it just depends on who your judge is. Right? Well, I mean, also in, in this case, it's it's also relevant that there's, there's no dispute among any of the parties that Kyle Rittenhouse is the one who killed these people. Exactly. I mean, a lot of this is documented partially on video possible part of it on a drone footage, if I'm not mistaken. Right, right. That's right. Joan drone footage was released late during the trial actually, but so let, let's talk about what he's charged with. So, so Mr. Rittenhouse is charged right now. He was originally charged with seven offenses. Those were first degree, reckless homicide, first degree recklessly endangering safety, first degree, intentional homicide attempted first degree, intentional homicide, first degree recklessly endangering safety, possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 and a curfew violation right off the bat.

The good news Kyle Rittenhouse, the curfew violation has been, oh man. Wow. It doesn't have to worry about that. $30 fine deep sigh relief up to 200. Oh wow. Okay. That's some real loot there that charge has gone. So what we're going to do Russ just rattled off a list of charges here. We're going to discuss each of those charges in turn, as it relates to each victim. Cause remember there's three victims. In fact, I'm using the word victim rusty, should I be using the word victim? Well, that's, let's, let's unpack that first because this was something that came up in this trial. The defense filed a motion asking that the term victim not be allowed to be used. And for anyone out there, this is not a novel filing. I filed this motion in my cases. I've actually never file that in my cases.

But I, I, I saw it when I was a deputy district attorney. It didn't matter what kind of case it was. If it was a theft case, it was an assault case. Typically the office of the public defender would file a motion saying we do not want the victims in the case to be named quote unquote victims. And the idea there Russ is, is just that word victim by calling them a victim that inherently biases the jury into thinking that they are an aggrieved party already. And so what do you think about that for us? Well, because just, just to dig into that a little deeper, like Rittenhouse has, he has endorsed self-defense. He is saying that all my actions this night were in defense of myself, therefore by definition, if that is proven to be true, these people that were killed were by definition, not victims, they were aggressors.

I was defending myself. So you can't call them victims. I mean, he's saying I didn't do anything wrong. These were the bad actors. And according to him, I will tell you this. I have never seen a judge grant that motion. I've always seen a judge say, you know what? The prosecution can call them victims. You're allowed to contest that term in your presentation of the facts. But frankly, it's just a way where we can keep the party straight. But in this particular case, the judge agreed with the defense and said, yeah, you cannot refer to the people who got shot as victims in this case. So that's just one little side note that came up in a pre-trial ruling. And we know how you guys love those those juicy nuggets that come up in pretrial rulings. So Russ, how about we start with victim number one, victim.

Number one is a man named Joseph Rosenbaum. He is the first one killed in this bizarre sequence of events that unfolds that night. Let's talk about kind of what we know about Mr. Rosenbaum. First of all, Mr. Rosenbaum is he is one of the protestors there at this at this rally, whatever you want to call it at this protest protest. And he w off-camera somehow gets into an altercation with Kyle Rittenhouse. He threatens to kill them. Exactly. he, you know, and, and remember Kyle is armed with this AR 15 he's, he's got it with him the whole time. It's ready to shoot. And he gets into a dispute with Joseph Rosenbaum who, you know, should be noted as, oh yeah. Sorry, Joseph Rosemont, Joseph Rosenbaum is unarmed. He's he does not have a weapon, but he is making threats against this guy.

You know what he has, he has a plastic bag full of his personal items because he just recently got released from the hospital and he chucked a plastic bag at Kyle that's exactly right. And Kyle Rittenhouse is walking away from Mr. Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum throws this bag when that happens. And this is undisputed. A gunshot goes off, a bystander shoots off a warning shot, Rittenhouse who's walking away. This is what he's saying, by the way, he's going to say that he thought he was under fire. At that point. At that point Rosenbaum confronts, Rittenhouse tries to get the gun from him. Rittenhouse kills him, shoots him four times. And, and Rittenhouse dies, or pardon me written out Rosa Rosenbaum thank you guys very shortly after. So that is killing number one for that he's charged with first degree, reckless homicide. That is a statute in Wisconsin that carries up to 60 years.

There's another five years for the use of a dangerous weapon with that and what they have to prove what the prosecution has to prove in order to convict him a first degree, reckless homicide of Joseph Rosenbaum is that he recklessly caused the death of another human being under circumstances, which show utter disregard for human life. Yeah. So that's, that's the standard. And the important part of that is the mental state, right? The mens REA that we've talked about in other podcasts it's recklessly here. Yeah. They didn't. What they're saying is he didn't intend his intention wasn't to kill Joseph Rosenbaum, but his actions were so reckless and could have been prevented. So they're saying his reckless nature led to this killing. That's why he should be. And for those of you out there who were saying, why didn't they charge him with intentional here?

Because they charged him with intentional for another one. They charged him with the top class, a felony. Part of the reason is we do not have video of this. This interaction happened out of sight of any camera. And no one really knows exactly what happened, but piecing it together from Kyle written a house's account and from forensics, which essentially show that first two shots went into Mr. Rosenbaum were non-fatal non-lethal shots. The third and fourth one were into his back and his head. But the third and fourth were at an angle where Mr. Rosenbaum was either falling forward from being shot or lunging at Kyle Rittenhouse, depending on whose version of, I believe, regardless though, he's saying I acted in self defense here, he's saying this guy was trying to attack me or was trying to disarm me or both. And he's saying I had no choice, but to shoot him and kill him.

Okay. So let's, even though he was an armed, so self-defense here. Yeah, let's talk about self-defense in Wisconsin, right? So self-defense, you can use force, you can intentionally use force, but you can only do it if the actor, so that's Kyle Rittenhouse reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself. So he can only fire a gun because that's going to cause death or great bodily harm. If he reasonably believes great bodily harm or death is going to be inflicted on himself. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the defense in this case is very, is working very hard to get the jury inside of Kyle Rittenhouse has had that th that that's really what they're trying to do here. They're trying to suggest that his actions were reasonable based on the information that he had at that time.

So what they're saying is this guy is threatening to kill him. Joseph Rosenbaum is threatening to kill Kyle Rittenhouse. Right. And he's approaching him, he's lunging toward his weapon. They're saying, well, yeah, he had no choice, but to kill him. Right. And, and a lot of this is going to come down to, for, in my opinion, it's going to come down to whether it was reasonable for Kyle Rittenhouse to believe that he had a gun that, that gunshot was actually held possessed by Joseph Rosenbaum. Because if, if that's a reasonable belief and Kyle thinks he's being shot at, at that point, I think self-defense flies. Right. However, he didn't have a gun in his hand. I know. I mean, he didn't have a gun. Right. so yeah, I, I honestly don't know. I re I th th this is, we're gonna be talking about this as we go along.

None of this case is black and white. I mean, this is very, very hard to decide what to predict. I think what a jury is going to do in this case is we'll continue talking, but that's victim number one. So what's a reckless homicide charge to which he is asserting self-defense Russ, who should we move on to the next victim? Let's move on to the next one. I'll let you guys know at the end of this Colin and I are going to, we're going to actually put ourselves out there and give you what we think the outcome's going to be. Right. Obviously no one knows, but we're going to, we're going to give you our guesses. So the second victim, or the second, the second person that is the underlying basis for a charge, I should say, relates to reporter Richard McGuinness.

Now Richard McGinnis was following specifically following Kyle Rittenhouse, probably because this is this kid with an AR 15, right? And so, you know, he's thinking, ah, this, this could end up being something that I could write a story about, or I can do a news piece on it, turned out to be right about that. He was definitely right about that. So Kyle Rittenhouse is charged with first degree recklessly endangering the safety of another. And that is basically because Richard McGuinness was in the line of fire when Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum. Exactly. And this is another reckless standard. Remember, they're not saying that he intentionally directed a shot at this journalist Richard McGinnis. They're simply saying that his actions were so reckless, that, that that they showed an utter disregard for human life. Exactly. So and of course he can actually, he can still argue self defense in so far as he saying, when I was shooting the gun my life was in danger and I was trying to defend myself.

I wasn't intent. I wasn't being reckless at all. I was fending off an attack, right. So even though he's not necessarily saying Mr. Mcguinness was a threat to him, he's saying someone else was a threat to me at the time, which justified my discharge of the weapon in the direction of Mr. Mcginnis for the prosecution standpoint, they don't have to prove that he was trying to shoot Richard McGinnis. Clearly he wasn't, they just have to prove that he was reckless. If they're successful, they're people 12 and a half years in prison, up to 12 and a half years, plus an additional five for the use of the weapon. That's right. So then let's move on to I guess victim number three, in terms of how this is charged, but this is our second homicide victim. We're going to talk about a man by the name of Anthony Huber.

Now after Rittenhouse shoots and kills, Rosenbaum he flees, he starts running. He ends up tripping and Arthur Huber is a bystander. He is unarmed, but he knows that Rosenbaum is trying to flee. And so he pursues rose and BOM and takes his skateboard and hits him in the shoulder. He then gets in an altercation with Rittenhouse in, and this is where there's debate in terms of whether or not Puba was actually trying to wrestle the AR 15 away from Rittenhouse. But we know the tragic outcome, which is that Rittenhouse opens fire again and kills Huber, Huber loses that battle, loses that battle. And so this is a completely different look since we have a different victim. So we're going to go through this analysis again, this time, the charge is what Russ first degree, intentional homicide. So we've changed from reckless to intentional.

The prosecution is saying that Kyle Rittenhouse intended to kill Anthony Huber. This carries life without parole. I believe life in prison. So this is, this is his, I guess, most serious charge definitely facing. And again, we talked about this this self-defense statute in Wisconsin requires a proportional use of force. So, you know, we believe that in order for a Rittenhouse to be able to successfully use self-defense as his main defense here, he's going to have to, they're going to have to convince a jury that Huber was about to use deadly force on Kyle Rittenhouse. And it was basically a him or me decision yeah. Or substantial bodily injury. So something that would kill him or come close to killing him. So here's, here's the analysis, you know, if you have someone like what, what can be a weapon that could be deadly force, right?

Anything, I mean, when you think about it, anything, I mean, you, any object that you could swing and hit someone in the head that could be a deadly, probably not a piece of paper, but any like a baseball bat, right. You're talking about a baseball bat. If someone hits, swings full force with a baseball bat and hits you in the head that could kill you. That's right. So, okay. So this wasn't a baseball bat. This was skateboard, but this is still a piece of wood. I mean, it's still something that has some weight, maybe not as heavy as a bat, maybe not as easy to sway. Well, and remember, let's remember a couple of things here. We're not going to get to hear from Mr. Huber on what his intention was and in a way, Russ, it doesn't matter because we, we look at what was reasonable in the eyes of Kyle Rittenhouse, right?

So Kyle Rittenhouse is going to say, I thought this guy was going to kill me with his skateboard. That's what he has to say. The jury is going to have to decide whether or not being threatened with a skateboard. When when the, when Ms. Rittenhouse has an AR 15, that he just killed someone with they're going to have to decide whether or not those were equal amounts of force glee. It's not, I mean, I'll tell you right now, this is, this is in my opinion where Kyle Rittenhouse has the most exposure of being found guilty. I agree. Okay. Cause a skateboard, I'm sorry. I mean, you can make the argument that a skateboard is a blunt instrument and it's heavy. And if you get hit in the temple with the edge of a skateboard, you know, maybe it would, he didn't get hit in the temple.

He got hit in the shoulder. I don't know how he was swinging it. I'm not sure if there's video of that or not. But we have witnesses who are, who testified about it, but that is a tough sell for me that a skateboard is going to actually require deadly force in response. Let's, let's not forget the kind of good Samaritan angle that, that is the undertone of this. I mean, even though the jury is going to be instructed that they have to look at this in the eyes of a reasonable person, you know, in terms of was Kyle Rittenhouse acting reasonably, you've got a guy Rittenhouse walking around people at this protest with an AR 15, and you have this guy Huber trying to stop it. And Rittenhouse is saying, oh, I had to kill this guy. I had to kill him. It was him or me.

He was attacking me with a skateboard. I don't know, Russ that's. I would agree with you. That is his biggest hurdle to climb here. So there's something interesting in Wisconsin law on this case, if the jury finds that Rittenhouse believed he was in danger of death or great bodily harm, but that belief was irrational or unreasonable. Okay. So they say, okay, we think Kyle did think he was going to get killed by this skateboard, but we also think you're not going to get killed by a skateboard. Right? So we see he has the belief, but it was unreasonable in Wisconsin law that takes it down from that top class felony requiring life in prison to up to 60 years, it takes it down a class to second degree, intentional homicide instead of first degree. So it's a lesser includes, a lesser included offense. So there's a chance a jury splits the baby on that and says, we don't want to put them in prison for life. We don't want, we want to put them in prison for up to 60 years, which is most people's lives. Right. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break to play. Is this legal but we'll be back after the segment to talk about the third victim and you know, we'll talk about some other interesting aspects of this case too, right? And the third victims, an interesting one gage gross roots [inaudible] testified in court. So when we get back, we're going to hear about what he has to say, stay tuned.

All right. For today's episode of is this legal, we would like to welcome our guest, Justin Jenko to the podcast. Justin is the owner of Southwood construction. He's a general contractor and builder, and his company has remodeled about a hundred homes in the Denver Metro area. He's also a bike mechanic, a political junkie, a hockey player, and he has performed in front of audiences as a contortionist. He also dabbles in particle physics. He actually worked on the large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, while he was in college. That's a pretty solid resume. Justin, let's see if he has any legal proclivities though. Please. Welcome to the show. Justin GENCO, how you doing today, Justin?

Good. How are you guys doing great.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much

For having me. That's a pretty impressive resume, man. Let me just say that I had, I had a lot of fun reading it.

I think he churched up a bit. It sounds a lot better than that. I feel it actually is.

I, I feel like everyone should get introduced like once a month just to like, get that boost to self-confidence. Well, Justin, thank you so much for joining us today before turn you into a contestant or wondering you got any fun, legal stories that you could share with our listeners, from your wife?

Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, I think I do. I, I recall one instance when I was in college, a couple of buddies and myself, we decided to go to a concert that happened to be you know, about an hour outside my home in Tennessee. And I was in college in Boston. And so I got tickets and I told my parents were coming down, so we're gonna stay with them for a night. And then we're going to camp at this festival for a handful of days. And what happened? We were driving basically sort of overnight, you know, in college, we didn't want to spend money on a hotel. So three of us were switching, driving all the way down there. And about an hour outside of my mom's house or two hours outside of this festival we get pulled over for going I think it was about two or three miles an hour over the limit.

And so we were, we were quite surprised get pulled over. It takes quite a bit of time, couple hours, long story short. I ended up with a summons come back to this little town in Tennessee to go to court about two months later. So being in college, not wanting to tell my parents about this situation. I basically just decided that I would take a couple of days off of work while I was in college. And drive back down to this court date and, you know, take my own medicine and figure it out. I'm technically an adult like 20, 21 years old. So I believe Boston by myself. I think like middle of the day, Thursday court dates like Friday morning, something like that, basically drive straight there. One of the parking lot of the court I was filming, waiting for an hour. I'm pretty nervous. Not really sure what's going to happen. No representation whatsoever. Finally they call me up, talk to the judge, basically gives me an option of either going to jail for two weeks immediately. Or coming back in a month or two with a proper representation. And you know, it's still the whole time I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, wow, what did I do? I'm in trouble. I really don't want to tell my parents. So for a quick minute or two, I was honestly contemplating just going to jail two weeks.

But luckily I decided that was just kind of crazy. So I opted to come back with representation. So then I had to tell my folks, I immediately got in the car midday, Friday and drove back to Boston straight and long story short. My parents got got me a lawyer. And you know, a lawyer worked things out basically said, you don't have to come back down here and we'll deal with it. Got everything kind of figured out from there. So it makes sense to have a representation. Right?

Thanks for the commercial there. Right? Exactly. You're talking to the right people. We're going to agree with that, Justin, that was all from a two to three mile per hour over citation.

Yeah. Well, there was some other things. It wasn't, I never actually got a speeding ticket. Could we just maybe say contraband was found and we'll leave it at that. Sure. Being a teenager, a typical teenager thing.

I did like how you left that part out. I'm like, God, I just got glossed over initially

Frustrated by it.

All right. So Justin, you got that story out of the way. Is your head clear? Are you ready for, is this legal

Your listeners? You know how this works? I'm going to give you a scenario at the end. I'll ask you to tell us, is it legal? What's the answer here is the scenario, Justin, our good friend, Jebidiah dabbles in drugs as you well know, he's now become a drug kingpin. He has a major operation. He's married to his wife, Myrtle during their marriage. He tells Myrtle all about his operation, how it works, the people he's iced, where all the bodies are buried, breaking bad style. Myrtle has all the dirt things between them are peaches and cream until they're not. Eventually Myrtle gets sick and tired of the drug deals at all hours of the night. Jebidiah just, isn't spending enough time with her. She seeks comfort in the arms of another man. None other than Jebidiah arch-nemesis Cornelius. She divorces Jebidiah and marries Cornelius. After the divorce, Justin Jebidiah gets charged with numerous crimes relating to his drug empire. He pleads not guilty. And the case goes to trial the da calls Myrtle to the stand, to testify about how Jebidiah ran his operation while they were married. Myrtle is more than happy to testify about jeopardize illegal goings-on. However, before she takes the stand, Jebidiah stands up and says, I hear by invoke spousal privilege and demand that Myrtle not to be allowed to testify, testify about anything. I told her, should the judge allow Myrtle to testify or not?

Wow. that's tricky one for you, man. Yeah. I've never heard of spousal privilege. It seems like, you know, maybe sort of at balls along the lines of like pillow talk, is that kind of similar, you know, what's said between spouse, private might not be admissible, something like that. That's very complicated. What would my answer be? I would say that she should be allowed to give her testimony or, or answer questions or wherever that might be.

All right. Well, Justin, I'm sorry to say, but new show us morally.

I am about 500 when it comes to these questions.

That's okay. Like I said, we gave you a tough one and most people don't know about this concept of spousal privilege, but there is in fact, a a legal doctrine that allows to people who are in a marriage, you are allowed to tell each other everything. And if, if, if there's ever a criminal prosecution where one party wants to offer testimony about the other party, why, when talking about a communication that was during the marriage if, if the defendant doesn't want that spouse to testify, he can invoke spousal privilege. And in this particular case, because the communications were made during the marriage, a Myrtle would not be allowed to testify. Justin, let's say that instead of Jebidiah being prosecuted for his drug activity, he was charged with domestic violence. He was charged with assaulting Myrtle. Now can Myrtle testify against him.

Well, geez. You, you would think absolutely.

Absolutely absolutely. Would be correct Justin.

Yeah. I mean obviously criminal sort of situation, but yeah, yeah. If it's directly related, I suppose.

Yep. So look now, Justin, you're a winner. You came up with the right answer. So Nicely done. Everyone's a winner on, is this legal justice?

Yes, I'll be expecting my my prize in the mail.

Oh, sure. And we'll get that prize right out to you. I've got a very nice business card. Justin to wrap up is but besides being the owner of Southwood construction, a great business, a local business here in Denver. Is there anything you'd like to plug for yourself?

No. No. Yeah. I don't I don't really put myself out there. I'm not selling anything and not yeah, no, thank you for the opportunity.

We've got a principled man here and I respected Justin. You've been a wonderful contestant. Thank you so much for joining our program and we'll catch you next time. Okay. Thanks

Justin Russell. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Bye bye.

Bye.

Welcome back everyone. So we are on two gauge gross. Kreutz I'm sorry, gage for the butchering of your name, but that's as close as I can come, grow screwed. C K R E U T Z, who is a gage? Gage is a volunteer paramedic. He was out there with his med kit out there to help people to help anyone who was injured, who had pepper spray in their eyes who had been caught. And he was out there trying to help people. However, he is a second amendment believer and he, his quote was, it was like any other day when I leave the house it's wallet, keys, phone gun. Yep. So I was going with him. He had his gun with him. It was a concealed gun. He had a concealed carry permit, although it was expired. So he actually, he wasn't allowed to have a concealed, but he did.

And he was there when Kyle shot the other two gentlemen, he went and confronted Kyle. He confronted him with a gun and pointed a gun at him intending to shoot him. Well, no, not intending to shoot him. He specifically said I couldn't do something like that. Even if it's to save my own life. That was his testimony. I didn't realize he said that he did point his gun at him to your point and that's yeah, we have to look at what Kyle Rittenhouse believable at the time someone's pointing a gun at you. It is reasonable to believe that that person is going to shoot you or intends to shoot. Well, and what Kyler in house did was shoot him. He shot him in the bicep. He basically just destroyed his bicep. And, but gay lived, he lived, he lived and he's, you know, not fully recovered, but he's fine.

He's a prosecution witness. So like Russ said, he has already testified and he admitted to pointing the gun at Rittenhouse. And so what, what are the charges that he is that Rittenhouse is facing as it relates to Mr. Say it said gross, Kreutz gross. Kreutz attempted first degree, intentional homicide. So essentially attempted murder. So same thing as the intentional homicide that they're charging against Anthony Huber, the guy with the skateboard, except this is an attempt because it was unsuccessful. This, I think in both of our opinions, Collin is the case that Kyle Rittenhouse has the best defense to, if someone is pointing a gun at you, that is lethal force that is likely to cause death or great bodily injury. And if you have a gun and someone's pointing a gun at you, you can fire. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. I honestly, I'm.

I'm a little bit, I wonder a little bit why the prosecution even charged him on this one because I think they just wanted to, wanted to get everything out there. Right. But this is just such a, such a tough one to convict on will. And remember we, we look at the self-defense in terms of what Mr. Rittenhouse believed at the time. And if it, in a way it doesn't matter what happened earlier, what really matters, what was Rittenhouse doing in that moment and were his actions reasonable based on what he knew? So from a defense standpoint, I guess from the prosecution standpoint, they're going to say Rittenhouse was out there just to kill people. And that's why you should convict ladies and gentlemen of the jury, because, because exactly for that charge, Rittenhouse is facing up to 60 years in prison, plus five for the weapon.

Right. So let's move on to the next one. Right? And these are we're not going to spend a lot of time with this. He's also charged Russ with first, first degree recklessly endangering safety use of a dangerous weapon. This relates to a person who was trying to kick Rittenhouse. He missed any ran away. What is it that Britain has shot at him? Yes. Right now, shout at him. This is, this is concurrent with Mr. Huber with a skateboard. So this happened at about the same time. There was some other unidentified person that no one has tracked down and probably very intelligently decided he didn't want to bring himself into this case. He tried to kick Kyle Kyle shot at him. Kyle missed for that. Kyle was charged with, again, another recklessly endangering the safety of another he's exposed to 12 and a half years plus five for the weapon on that one.

Yeah. So then he's also charged with one misdemeanor. Well, the curfew violation we were talked about that was dismissed, but he's charged with possession of a weapon of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 reminder. This kid was 17 years old when this happened and he's going around with an AR 15, he's going to get convicted of that. I don't see any way in heck that he's not, he's dead to rights on that one. And that one he's, he's exposed to up to nine months in county jail. Yeah. So, okay. In a minute, we're going to go through these charges and talk about where we think a jury is going to land on this. Why in a minute, let's do it now. We'll do we want to talk about mom in the case first? Russ, let's talk about Kyle Rittenhouse, his mom because this, this is, this is one of the, for me personally, this is one of the most aggravated parts of this whole story.

The fact that this 17 year old kid's mom drove him. Cause she drove him. They hopped in the family wagon and they headed across state lines. Right? Cause Kyle Rittenhouse, he's not from Wisconsin. He's from Illinois. Right. She drove him across state lines with her son. Who's not allowed to carry a weapon, let alone an AR 15 dropped him off into the middle of a protest that was fraught with racial tension where other protests things had exploded. And she just put her son into this environment and said, bye-bye have fun. Right, right. Play nice with others. You know, the trial is going on right now. I watched a little bit of his testimony and they actually needed to interrupt the proceedings because his mom started burst out in tears during his testimony and caused a disruption in the trial. But yeah, I, I, well, first of all, is she facing any charges in this Russ?

No, she's not. She hasn't been charged with any, anything. It would be a stretch to charge her. I think it feels like she should be, it should have been charged with contributing to the liquidity of a minor. We have that charge. I mean, just by the fact that she let her son arm himself with this weapon and she took him to this event, that's pretty darn pretty darn stupid. Maybe aiding and abetting the possession of a weapon by a person under 18. I mean, let me just say, I mean, regardless of where we're going to fall on the legal ramifications for this kid, everything this kid did was so stupid. Everything his mom did was so stupid that the way that he, that he was inserted into this situation, it was, it was just a recipe for disaster. And that's something that I'm really, you know, having a hard time getting over.

And I wonder what the jury is going to think of all this. Well, it's going to cut both ways, right? Because this is a kid, he was 17 at the time. This isn't someone with a lot of life experience. And when think about this, remember the original call, like, like you were joking earlier in the podcast. It's not like this call to arms came from a position in power with authority. It's not like the mayor issued this, you know, APB saying, if you're armed, come save our town. We're under fire. Or the police force put out this thing, we're going to deputize people and make you our deputies. And, and you know, you, you were all going to help us enforce the law. This is a militia group. That's recruiting other militia types on Facebook. And clearly they're not recruiting 17 year olds who don't even have the ability to possess a weapon, much less the worst possible weapon that a person can use.

Specifically the AR 15, which is capable of killing multiple people in one city it's designed to kill as many people, as many soldiers as possible on a battlefield. The notion that that's our intent here is just so absurd. Russ, you know, that's the absurdity and which really makes this such a tragic case. Is it, it, you just look at the whole thing, like, is this was so preventable. It was so preventable, you know, but nevertheless Mrs. I don't know Mrs. Rittenhouse. I don't know if the same name or not, but she has not been charged with anything. But we, we needed to make a special point to call out Mrs. Ray Rittenhouse for being one of the worst moms of the year. And we stand by that. No, if we had a worst mom of the year award, she would take it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Maybe she should. Maybe she should be for a DCO TW someday. I dunno. Maybe. anyway so Russ at this point, do we want to talk about what we think is going to happen here? We are. We are not averse to making predictions to let's talk about his defense, his defense for at least the Huber one. Well, it probably purportedly for the Rosenbaum one. We'll see what his defense attorneys arguing, closing, maybe for the Huber one, but his defense might be okay. These people were grabbing my gun. We didn't mention this earlier. Rosenbaum it was uncontested that at the time one of those four shots were fired. Rosenbaum had his hand on the barrel of Rosenbaum's Rittenhouse has gotten right. Arguably trying to take it away from him either. Right. If you're, if you're him, you're saying he was trying to take the gun away from me and therefore he was taking it away and then would have used it against me.

So there's my self defense claim. Right, right. He was going to take my gun and shoot me with it. Therefore self-defense I had to shoot him. I mean, the prosecution saying he was probably trying to push the gun away so he didn't get shot. No one will ever know. Right, right. But what about that defense? Like what about the defense of, Hey, I had a gun, he was tussling. He was trying to get that gun. If he got the gun, he was going to turn around and shoot me with it. There's that threat of serious bodily injury or death. And I had no choice, but to shoot him. Yeah. I agree with you. I think this is probably the toughest charge to predict what they're going to do because I can need, I can honestly see it going either way. You got the prosecution, who's going to harp and harp and say, Rittenhouse has an AR 15 Rosenbaum had nothing.

He had his words. He was right. He was just plastic bag, plastic bag. But of course the defense is going to say, folks, look at what Kyle knew. At the time he hears this gunshot behind him. He knows he's got, these are threatening to kill him. And then he's got a guy, literally lunging forum trying to take his weapon away. It was either him or me, the fact that he was maybe trying to take the gun away is not compelling at all. If you maybe, I mean, I, oh, well here's why hear me out. Because if that is to stand, if you can submit successfully a self-defense claim for someone trying to take a gun away from you, and then you shoot them, then any time you have a gun and you're out with a bunch of unarmed people, if someone tries to disarm you and you shoot them, that's, self-defense, that's a really good point, Russ.

And we are living in a world where people open, carry their AR 15 into a Walmart while they're getting socks for their kid. Or we live in this world right now. We did this whole podcast on gun laws in American. We talked about open carry and the fact that you can do this and, and, and, and you know, I, I look at this and I'm like, this is crazy. I mean, because if, if I saw a person like that, I would be terrified. I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes off the person and be like, is this person a mass shooter? Who's going to do something. And frankly, when we get to Mr. Huber, I think that's what he was thinking. Right. We do live in a world with mass shootings. Right. Right. So any mass shooting out there, if that defense was allowed to stand, anytime someone tried to defend a mash to disarm a mass shooter.

Nope. That's self-defense, can't take my gun away from me. I can shoot you. You're trying to take my gun. Yeah. So, so that, that defense does not float at all for me. I don't know. I w I I'm, I hear what you're saying. I don't know what the jury is going to do on that one. I, I, if I, if I'm forced to make a prediction right now, I'm going to say he gets acquitted for the homicide of Mr. Rosenbaum. I am. I hear ya. I think a lot of this is going to depend upon how compelling the, honestly, I hate to say this, but how compelling the attorneys are. Yeah. Cause normally, well also how compelling Rittenhouses on the stand, remember in order to make a self-defense claim flight, you basically got to take the defense and remember you're, you're admitting that you did this, right.

It it's, you're, you're saying I did shoot the gun. I did kill these people, but I did it in self-defense. He's not saying he didn't do it. It's, it's really how, and, and, and can that be believed, right. You know? So you're saying not guilty on Rosenbaum I'm going to, I know that's not necessarily my personal belief. I just think that's based on what I know about the case. I don't know if they can get over the, beyond a reasonable doubt standard for that one. I agree with you that it is incredibly close. But I'm going to go ahead and say, I'm guilty on that one. How about reckless homicide? How about McInnes? The reporter McInnes goes the way Rosenbaum does. I think, I think you're right, because if the jury bites off on self-defense and say he was justified in the killing of Rosenbaum, I don't see how they're going to convict him of shooting near McGinnis.

Right. I agree with you. I think that the jury's decision is on that count is going to be based on what they do in Rosenbaum. I guess I'll stick to my wrong, wrong, wrong pun, but I'll stick to my guns and say he's going to quit. He's going to be acquitted on that charge when you're saying not guilty. I'm going to, I have to say guilty they're handcuffed together. All right. I think we both think that the skateboard one is the toughest one for the defense. I agree. I mean, you've got Rittenhouse. You can't after killing a man he's fleeing, you know, and I, I don't, I don't know if this, how much of this came into the trial, but I think notably it's somewhat important that after he shoots Rosenbaum, he doesn't render aid, he doesn't remain on scene.

He gets the heck out of there. Flight is consciousness of guilt. The only point that I'm making is that it makes it more likely that a guy like Huber sees him fleeing and wants to do something about it and wants to stop him and uses the ma the means that he had, which was his skateboard. And I agree with you is a person armed with a skateboard, the equivalent of a person armed with AR 15, is the jury going to say those things cancel out and that it was either him or me. It was either him hitting me with a skateboard. Therefore I had to blow him away with my AR 15 assault rifle, tough sell. That's a tough sell. I think, I think he gets convicted on that charge. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna speculate on whether or not he gets convicted at the top charge or whether they go for the lesser charge.

But I do think he gets convicted for the death of Huber. I'm going to go with you on Huber. I agree with you. I think that's his biggest exposure. I think he's going to end up guilty on that one. I think there's very little chance that he's convicted on the gage, gross grits. I agree. He's pointing a gun at you. You can shoot them. I'm sorry. Like, I don't care if they're trying to do the right thing. I don't care if they're trying to disarm you. That's, that's self-defense and that's going to be a not guilty. I agree with you on that. So you know, of course there's so much other stuff that, that we could get into with this case, which we're not really going to do in terms of political overtones and you know, the, the racial tension that was building that led to this killing in the first place.

We're going to just kind of leave that alone. Or we were hoping to give you our listeners the best kind of a summary of what this case what's going on with this case, what we think is going to happen and let us know what you think too. Right? Let's get into [inaudible] w yeah. After, after such a heavy lift in there Russ site, I would like to get into something a little bit lighter. I need some levity. All right. Well levity, I shall attempt to bring you with this. Week's fresh DCO, TW russet, think at this point, I just have to admit it. I think we are picking on the state of Florida. We're, we're going right back to Florida. I mean, I don't know what is going on in Florida, where all of these cases seem to bubble up to the surface when I'm searching for them.

But we, we are going to Hialeah, Florida, which is apparently near Miami. Okay. And I guess to set this up, Russ, let, let me ask you a question kind of a, what would you do type of situation? Let's just say there's a truck that's parked right in front of your house. Maybe it's a moving truck. Maybe it's a, a utility truck, but you just don't like the way that it's parked. What, what would you do in that situation? How would you handle that? And yeah, it's parked there and you didn't want it parked there. I, I probably am going to wait for them to move, but if not, maybe I call the city the most, what you are saying is that what you wouldn't do is go retrieve your firearm, your revolver, load it, and start going out and shooting out the tires and the radiator of the truck.

I, is that what you're saying? You wouldn't do. That's just going to prevent it from being moved. That sounds like the worst thing to do. Well, let me tell you about George JoVE is 64, a retired firefighter who confessed to firing as many as 18 shots into two 18 T work trucks that were parked in front of his car, of his house. He didn't like the fact that they were out there parked in front of his house, repairing a telephone pole that was across the street where they blocking him in at least not according to the report that I have. He just didn't like the way he they were parked. He did go out. He asked them to move their vehicles. They politely responded and said, I'm sorry, sir, we have work to do or repairing this pole. And he said, oh, okay, okay.

I'm going to, I'll be right back. When it goes into his house, retrieves his weapon, listen to this 18 shots. This was a revolver, the dude reloaded twice Russ. Wow. He's just unloading there's video of this. He's just shooting the truck. One of the workers isn't panicked, he calls 9 1 1. He's also filming the event and says yeah, we're here doing work. And this guy is shooting our tires on our truck and he's shooting at our truck. And by the way, there's a guy up in the basket who can't come down because this man is shooting. Yeah. There was a guy Russ up in one of those cherry picker baskets doing work on the pole, terrified for his life because this guy is you know, shooting it up like Yosemite Sam. I mean, if that guy had a sniper rifle, that would have been the perfect vantage.

It might've been a different, a DCO TW long story longer. One reason this case actually got media attention is because he was arrested and was allowed to post bond right away without seeing a judge. And there was a huge outcry about that because there was no restriction for him to have to let go of his firearms, just turn my world upside down, because this is a retired firefighter. Like firefighters are like always, always, always supposed to be the good guy. I mean, in his confession, he said he went quote bananas, unquote, over the fact that these guys were parked in front of his truck. So here's what happened. I actually had to search for an update on this. He did not go to prison for this. He did get 10 years of probation. He pled guilty to multiple counts, including criminal mischief, property damage, and a shooting or throwing missiles at a building or vehicle.

Fortunately all those are felonies, which means that Mr. Joe will never be able to possess a weapon. Again, he will be on probation until 20, 28 by Malcolm my calculations. Well, I'm going to say that it's probably given his, I'm going to go out on a limb and say his anger management issues and say it's probably some mental health issues. Maybe I'm going to say it's having a really, really bad day at a, at a minimum safer for the state of Florida and for all of us that he never had a gun again. Yeah. I think everybody wins there at least. So on our knucklehead scale, Russ what do we think, God, I mean, just, just incredibly stupid. I mean, the fact that the fact that I really believe that he was having a mental health break. I mean, that cuts into it a little bit.

I do think so, like this wasn't just someone who is just so dumb that they don't. I mean, it sounds like he had a mental health break and I'm gonna, I'm going to take off one knucklehead. Okay. So gets a four for you. It's a four for me. Yeah. I think I can do the same. However, I will say just the, the stupidity of if his goal was he wanted these trucks, boy, did he make that job like 10 times harder? They're going to stay for quite a while. They're either they're going to have to fix the truck. They're going to have to repair all the wheels. You know, not to mention, get rid of all the crime scene, tape and ballistics information. He wasn't concerned at all about getting caught. Like he, he didn't want any steps. And actually that goes in his negative column.

I mean, he, he told the police everything that happened. So he, you know, he didn't, he wasn't smart enough to exercise his fifth amendment rights. I'll give it a four too. That's what this feels like. And I'm glad he's on probation. And yeah. And I'm glad he's in Florida and not Colorado. All right. Well, I'm kind of a heavy dose of is this legal today. But you know, we, we, we, we've gotten some feedback from our listeners saying that you guys want to hear more true crime. You guys want to hear about crimes are going on right now. And this is one that is happening right now. So let us know what you guys think. We really do love to hear your feedback. Send us an email, find us at our Twitter account. Is this legal pod or Hebets? Mckellen. Yeah, exactly. And find us on Facebook at Hebets. Mccallin. Do you think Kyle Rittenhouse did anything wrong? Do you think he should go to prison for the rest of his life? Yeah. Let us know what you think. We're certainly going to be finding out what a jury thinks and we'll of course update you as we get more information. Everybody be safe out there. Have a great day. [inaudible]

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