A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.
Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.
Hancock nonetheless said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense when he first relayed his story about fatally shooting Rosenbaum and Huber. Yet that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men slain in Kenosha demanding wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.
Wait are you trying to tell me that the kid who took a gun he didn’t own to a state he didn’t live in to shoot protestors he didn’t know ostensibly to protect businesses he’s unaffiliated with wanted to kill people?? Wow I am shocked. Shocked!
Honestly of course he wanted to murder people, anyone who disputes that is and has always been deliberately lying.
This fuck should be in jail.
Sounds like he will be soon enough considering the path he’s been on.
Jail or Presidential prospect.
Or assassin after his brain can no longer handle the cognitive dissonance.
Por qué no los dos?
I thought the same thing about George Zimmerman, but despite multiple domestic violence arrests involving a gun, and numerous other scandals he’s apparently still free, living his best life.
Good point.
Can he also be sued into oblivion?
Sure wish this had come to light during the trial.
A ton of evidence was blocked iirc, this was probably included.
The judge was doing his damnedest to make sure we all knew where they stood.
This was known back then. The judge blocked it. I can kind of see why because he didn’t shoot any shoplifters. He shot people who threatened, chased, and assaulted him.
The whole situation was stupid and he shouldn’t have been there but from all the video I’ve seen of the actual event he was pretty selective with his targets when it came to actually shooting people. It wasn’t consistent with his bragging. I kind of wish people would stop giving him attention at this point because all they’re accomplishing is giving him a platform to grift rightwingers from.
The analysis I read from a lawyer explained how Wisconsin’s state laws on self defense are weirdly complex, and due to the exact order of events, under those laws, his intent technically didn’t matter, and that’s why it was inadmissible evidence. In most states it would be admissable, and he would be guilty. He even listed the laws out and while I don’t recall any of the details now, it did seem perfectly logical to my layman’s understanding. So it’s not that the judge was biased, it’s just that Rittenhouse, through dumb luck, happened to fall through a legal loophole. Wisconsin needs to fix it’s laws, because it’s abundantly clear he wanted to kill those people and morally speaking, I consider him to be an unrepentant murderer.
because it’s abundantly clear he wanted to kill those people
I don’t see that to be clear at all. He fled from the first person who attacked him and didn’t shoot him until they guy caught him and was trying to take his weapon after verbally threatening him. The other two men he shot both attacked him as well when he was fleeing the first incident. If I recall correctly one had struck him with a skateboard and the other pointed a handgun at him while he was down. Considering there were other people chasing after him he didn’t shoot I’d consider him to have been fairly restrained. Usually people trying to fake a “I was just defending myself” defense put less effort into creating their pretext for shooting.
To me this entire situation was the people on both sides of it playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
This is how Wisconsin’s law is so fucked up: The three men he shot were not working together, were not coordinated, did not know each other. So, on the one hand, Rittenhouse may have subjectively felt under coordinated attack, he was not, but the subjective feeling is what matters for the law.
From Huber:s POV, he was trying to disarm a murderer. Maybe he felt threatened, too? But the law is so fucked, his POV doesn’t matter because he’s dead. In Grosskreutz’s POV, he was approaching an active shooter who’d just killed two men and trying to defuse the situation. When Rittenhouse pointed his gun, Grosskreutz would have been justified under the same law in blowing him away.
In short, the law incentivizes shooting first.
Is Wisconsin’s law really any different? Most states the test for self defense is reasonable belief that your life is in danger from an imminent threat, but I’d doubt that claim from anyone who is pursuing someone else who is fleeing from them.
I’m not familiar with other states’ laws. They could also be fucked up, too.
All those people that defended this douche when I said there was proof of intention that was dismissed by a biased judge can fuck all the way off.
Yup, it was clear from the start he was cruising for a fight, which the law is literally supposed to prohibit even from police officers
The prosecution team was 100% to blame for this little shit not getting what he deserved. I hope the litigants in the civil suit do a better job, but to be honest, they barely even need to try. Even I could put on a suit and walk in off the street and convince the jury of his liability in those killings. And that’s just using the evidence we had back in 2020. With these text messages, I could call it in over Zoom while driving around delivering pizzas for 40 minutes.
It’s easy to talk out of your ass about how you would have done a better job, but you clearly have no idea what the circumstances were that the prosecution team was dealing with. This particular piece of evidence for example was attempted to be admitted but was denied by the judge for being “irrelevant to the case.” The prosecution was fighting a court stacked against them and you would have had a hard time as well.
Murderous sociopaths gonna murderousociapathize
Let’s stop giving this idiot a voice in the media, please.
let’s instead give him something that will make an example out of him for other conservatives to think twice about.
So many gun owners I know share similar sentiments. Gun ownership to them is all about getting a legal kill. America is disgusting.
America is so different from when I was a child. Late stage capitalism is destroying our once great national like a malignant brain tumor and it is painful to watch
It was never great, you were just deluded. Or, you enjoyed taking part in the spoils of slavery and imperialism. lol
what really did it for me was his ADHD pacing around in circles while the riot vehicles rolled in. this was a manic little kid, way too excited to be holding a gun.
Why this specific instance of Rittenhouse exposing himself as bloodthirsty when there were many more instances before it?
Is there some “fifty flags” rule before you can say they’re planning to murder people?
Had to check if this was theonion@
Let’s be honest. Many, if not most, of us talked big when we were that age. The texts are just that. This is a kid with an inferiority complex trying to be seen as a tough guy. His actions that night were more like the coward he is inside. Which is not meant as an insult really. But he ran away. And to me he really did fire in the legal definition of self defense. The crime here is that he was there and armed at all. And further that society failed to help this kid find productive ways to prove his worth to himself. Kids aren’t born like this.
He did exactly what he said he was gonna do. He is a coward both ways.
And then we all grabbed a gun and actually killed people.
Oh wait.
And no. There is no self defense claim when you instigated it.
Sure there is. If you are in a fist fight, and the other guy draws a gun and shoots. Now you can fire back in self defense. And the law in the state he was in doesn’t have any mention of “not if you instigate it”. You are welcome to your opinion, but it doesn’t change the law, and really has nothing to do with my comment. Your motivations are a bit like Kyle, you just needed to be seen making a statement, even if it had nothing to do with the comment you replied to.
That sounds a lot like you instigated a fight and had ragrets when the “find out” part came around. If self defense is two people justified for shooting at each other then we live in insane land and nothing matters anymore because you can just walk into a store and self defense yourself some groceries. “I just wanted groceries and the clerk was mean to me when I tried to leave!”
Except of fucking course not because we don’t live in insane land and all the self defense laws have exceptions for committing crime. Like instigating a fight specifically to murder someone.
If you want to continue off the point I made that the crime was that he was there with a gun at all… Show some data on the exception to the law in the state this happened. And I don’t know what land you live in. Seems pretty insane to spend more than other countries on Healthcare and get worse results… or that the law protects businesses right to sell more tickets than there are seats on a plane. And of course rental car reservations. Government for the people by the people protecting businesses instead of the people.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022 https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights#Overbooking
Right so you think you can actually self defense yourself some groceries. Good luck with that, get your affairs in order before you do it because you won’t be getting bail on an armed robbery charge with felony murder.
I see. So you have no data, just spouting off. I change my mind when presented with data/sources. But that was never your goal.
It doesn’t take data to see they weren’t legalizing murder.
Sure, to a point. But not about murdering people. And we didn’t then go and do just that. It shows some forethought. There have been other shooters who made posts before hand more or less admitting to wanting to provoke people, then claim self defense. They did not get to claim self defense.
It can influence a jury, sure. But it isn’t proof of much of anything other than his poor mental state, and how brainwashed he was.
Many, if not most, of us talked big when we were that age.
Doubt. I never threatened to kill people when I was that age. I never wanted a gun.
Maybe I’m special.
Another of the special folk chiming in here. I have never threatened to kill anyone in my life (except maybe as a very obvious joke) and I’ve never so much as fired a gun.
I’m not seeing any messages about murdering shoplifters thought. The only examples given were:
“I wish they would come into my house.”
“I will fucking murder them.”
What’s unclear about “I will fucking murder them.”?
He’s talking about shooting people coming to his house but the title talks about shooting shoplifters
“The texts were in response to seeing shoplifters at a CVS pharmacy on 10 August”
When he says “I wish they would come into my house”, the word they refers to the shoplifters. When he says he will murder them he is still referring to the shoplifters.
Yeah good point. Fair enough. Didn’t put these two together the first time I read it.
Do you understand the difference between someone saying they would defend themselves and someone literally saying they would murder people?
Sounds like the article is a little confused, or this is brand new stuff, which is possible.
The comments about wanting to murder people that I knew about came him and a friend filming Black people leaving a cvs and them “knowing” they were all shoplifters and wanting to kill them for it. They’d just go sit outside drug stores because of propaganda and “filming subjects”.
There was also the video where he tried to jump a younger girl and when 3 black guys (his age) yelled at him not to hit a young girl. He immediately fell to the ground in a fetal position and started crying and begging, literally that was his reaction to being told not to beat a young girl.
Those two examples together showed he didn’t have the same basic reactions to a situation any normal human would have. And that he can’t properly identify risks.
he can’t properly identify risks.
Give me a fucking break.
You think he responds to shit like a functional adult?
I will never give this useless fuck any excuse for the intentional murder he committed.
Reasons aren’t excuses.
Excuses absolve guilt, reasons help us prevent it from happening again. It’s a lot easier to prevent shit when you understand it
I think the double jeopardy thing should be modified somehow to allow re-prosecution
While great in this application, overall this is an extremely shit idea. Do you really think the same court that let the dipshit go wouldn’t abuse the change by trying the poor and minorities over and over until charges stick?
Life is complicated, think through the consequences of your ideas.
Edit: spelling
And not just the poor and minorities. Trump apparently had the DOJ go after people he perceived as disloyal or political enemies, costing them millions of dollars in legal fees. Imagine if the government then just got a redo whenever it wanted. Even for a fairly wealthy person, that’s going to be a potent tool to silence them.
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I think it’s a good idea that you’re nowhere near the decision-making aparatus.
Tell me how you love Kyle without telling me you love Kyle.
Pretty big leap in logic there.
Sometimes a new trial is allowed if new evidence comes to light. But I’m guessing that this was known evidence that was suppressed by the judge.
It’s already a really bad standard. There’s people who have had the same trial 4 times and there was more than reasonable doubt as to their guilt. If the prosecutor wanted to try Rittenhouse again he could have. And loosening this standard will only make it easier to put innocent people in prison.
No more than are already in there. We could try people like OJ again.
Sure we would… We can’t even keep from executing innocent people in the current system and you want to make it easier to convict innocent people.
I suppose that’s one lens to look at it with.
Why don’t we just stop prosecuting crimes altogether? Seems like the best way to prevent innocent people from being convicted.
Don’t be disingenuous.
Don’t shift the topic and I won’t. Kyle needs to go to jail. This is just OJ. Guilty as fuck.
Welcome to 1950s America, conservative judges and juries bending over backwards to let white murderers walk. If we break the Justice system to counter them though they don’t lose. They win. They will use that to cause even more havoc on the poor and minority victims the police serve up.
Psycho gonna psycho.
