Justice has spoken and the United States is holding its breath again in the face of the possible reaction to a dictation that intensifies the Polarization. A jury of Kenosha (Wisconsin) ha acquitted this friday of the five counts that faced aa Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who armed with a semi-automatic rifle he killed in August of last year to two people and wounded a third in protests that were lived in the city after a white cop will shoot Jacob Blake in the back, a black citizen who was paralyzed (the agent was never charged).
After two weeks of trial and some 26 hours of deliberations, the five men and seven women of the jury have supported with their verdict the argument of the self-defense on which the attorneys at Rittenhouse, now 18, have built their case. And with their decision they have ignored the prosecution, which in its final arguments assured that “self-defense cannot be claimed against a danger that you have created”.
In the case of Rittenhouse, as is happening in another criminal trial in Georgia for the murder of the young black Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of three white men, and in another before the civil justice for the marches of white supremacists in Charlotesville in 2018, have combined some of the more explosive matters living in the US at the moment, a mix in which they appear issues of race and racism and the rise of protests in some cases violent but also of a growing wave of “vigilantism & rdquor; in which citizens of a country flooded with weapons in the hands of civilians they are taking justice into their own hands.
Rittenhouse, cuyo verdict cannot be appealed, has reacted to the reading of those five “not guilty” by bursting into tears and briefly collapsing. The tensionwhile it is elevated before the possibility that in the streets they will live again protests. The police presence has intensified in Kenosha and the Governor of Wisconsin has prepaired 500 members of the National Guardl in case the forces of order call for reinforcements.
A polarized country
At the moment, what they have done is to point out the deep division and polarization that exists in the country and also those that this case has caused. Conservatives, including numerous Republican politicians, have celebrated Rittenhouse’s acquittal verdict, which has become a symbol for the right and for those who defend the unlimited right of citizens to bear arms and act as patrollers or vigilantes. For Democrats and others progressive and racial justice activists, on the other hand, the resolution is another display of a penal system that they denounce “inside“.
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The family of Anthony Huber, one of the two men who died in the Rittenhouse shootings (who the controversial judge in the case, Bruce Schroeder, did not allow to be defined as “victims” during the process), has issued a statement in the one who denounces the verdict. “Send the unacceptable message that Armed civilians can appear in any city, inciting violence and then using the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street, “they have written.
Rittenhouse I was not of legal age to purchase the AR15 (which a friend acquired for him), but saw how the judge dropped a charge for the possession of that weapon. On the day of the protests, there was come from illinois and patrolled the streets with his gun past curfew time. And his case and trial have also brought the debate on tpermissive and even friendly time that the police gave him, in contrast to what the protesters who have taken to the streets of the United States have been receiving, especially after cases of police violence and brutality splashed by the racism.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com