Required Reading for the Day
From the pen of Larry Correia, The Spiked Club of Clarity, as we call him, and Master of Penitential Fisking:
Fisking one of the many Dumb Hot Takes on The Rittenhouse Case
My comment: This case has provoked several columns from me, more than usual for a topic of public interest, but that is for two reasons. First, I regard it as the trial of the decade, the trial that put the US court system on trial.
Second, this victory is our Midway Island, that is, the turning point in the Culture War. If we are bold, smart, quick, and unflagging as we press the advantage, it may hap that the forces of sanity and decency will have the orcs and trolls and creatures of darkness howling and scurrying in full rout. Let us drive with verve mercilessly them into the filthy holes and fetid sewers whence they crept, and make them fear the sunlight for a generation.
Herebelow is my dogpiling on the anonymous Internet expertificator, who apparently wrote his doggerel of dog-latin before the trial began, but now is still being broadcast like tares among wheat among the lefty social media. Click through the link above to Monster Hunter Nation to see the original, to which I here respond.
Dear Mr. Not-A-Lawyer,
One problem with being a paralegal fetching coffee for real attorneys, and occasionally aiding us with law library searches or cross-checking cites or copy-editing our documents for typos, is that if you hold yourself forth in public as a legal expert, a real attorney may read your words, and really unmask you in public as a facetious fool.
Such is the case here and now. I direct my remarks to the anonymous sophist posing as a legal expert.
Sir, whoever you are, I see your paralegal experience and raise you with my three law licenses.
Before retirement, I was admitted to practice law in three jurisdictions, after graduating from William and Mary’s Marshall Wythe School of Law, one of the finest in the nation. (For the record, I passed the notoriously difficult New York bar exam on my first go, which members of the Kennedy family, taking the bar at about the same time I did, cannot boast.)
Be that as it may, anyone armed with the internet and a search engine can find online commentaries, cases, digests, law review articles, common law and local statute and federal code for all these points. Any citizen can find the law of his jurisdiction.
As for the facts of the case, anyone can review the trial in its entirety. It is all recorded, and available online for anyone to view.
Dear emptyheaded, blackhearted purveyor of deception: You have misstated the law, and misrepresented the facts.
You are making errors that would flunk out a 1L law student from his first semester crimlaw class.
The most notorious error is one Mr. Correia pointed out: you are conflating the castle doctrine with the duty to retreat, and misstating the conditions when and if the doctrine of self defense applies, not to mention blithering about matters irrelevant to the case of Rittenhouse.
Here is Blackstone’s commentary on the Common Law, which is in force in America in any jurisdiction where subsequent case law or statute has not overturned it:
“[T]he law requires that the person, who kills another in his own defence, should have retreated as far he conveniently or safely can, to avoid the violence of the assault, before he turns upon his assailant; and that, not fictiously, or in order to watch his opportunity, but from a real tenderness of shedding his brother’s blood. And though it may be cowardice, in time of war between two independent nations, to flee from an enemy; yet between two fellow subjects the law countenances no such point of honor: Because the king and his courts are the vindices injuriarum [avengers of injuries], and will give to the party wronged all the satisfaction he deserves.”
Note the duty to retreat here is limited to a case where it can be done safely and conveniently. Such is never the case when the attacker is in hot pursuit. Never.
For the record, Wisconsin statute does NOT impose a duty to retreat. Subsequent law has overturned the common law duty. Here is the exact wording.
” A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his or her person by such other person. ….
“The actor may not intentionally use force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless the actor reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.
“If an actor intentionally used force that was intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm, the court may not consider whether the actor had an opportunity to flee or retreat before he or she used force and shall presume that the actor reasonably believed that the force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself if the actor makes such a claim…” (Wis. Stat. § 939.48)
Got that? Wisconsin courts are forbidden to consider whether the defendant had opportunity to flee or retreat.
Note to any lazy scam artists in earshot: I found this after one and one-eighth second of internet searching, without even any need to log onto Westlaw or Nexis.
Again, as Mr. Correia correctly points out, your recital of the castle doctrine is irrelevant to the case here, which is outside anyone’s home, and only applies to limit the duty to retreat further in those jurisdictions imposing a duty to retreat, of which Wisconsin is not one such.
While there is a legal principle that denies raising self defense as a right in a case where the defendant himself created the conflict or instigated the fight, technically speaking, the defendant does not lose the right of self-defense merely by committing a crime, if such a crime does not endanger another: and, even so, the holding of the current case produced no evidence that Rittenhouse committed a crime or initiated the conflict. So this is merely noisy eructation on your part.
The legal standard for self defense is a reasonable belief (see above), namely, would a reasonable man in the same situation, given his knowledge of the time, had reason to fear threat to life, limb, or property?
There is no requirement that the threat be actual; there is certainly no requirement that the assailant be better armed than the defendant, or armed at all.
Men have been killing each other with bare hands since before the dawn of history, and, in this case, kicks and stomps, chains, and skateboards were involved, as well as a loaded firearm pointed at Rittenhouse.
And, despite what George Lucas may have later edited out or airbrushed in, once anyone draws a weapon and points it at you, speaking such words as to imply an immediate threat of bodily harm, you do not need to wait for him to shoot first.
Han shot first, and was well within his legal right to do so.
So take your credentials as a paralegal or legal clerk, put them in your mouth, and shove them up your fundament into your lower intestinal tract, where you may lodge your head in truth as you have lodged it metaphorically with your windy and meaningless attempt to awe us with your wisdom.
You are a gassy and bloated bladder, sir. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge in the matter can prick you and watch you sputter, fly in circles, and fall in limp deflation.
Shut your mouth, go away, and elsewhere, out of earshot, may you have a pleasant day. Your fatuous and flabby ignorance is abundant, and so can keep you company on cold nights.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
