Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The aftermath of the Rittenhouse acquittal continues, but not the way the utterly corrupt prosecutors would like.  The SMM Rittenhouse case archive is here.  

As regular readers may recall, Dominick Black, a friend of Kyle Rittenhouse, bought the AR-15 carbine Kyle used to save his life.  At the time, Kyle was 17, and on first blush, could not lawfully buy or possess a rifle.  And so Black was over-charged with two felonies: delivering a dangerous weapon to a minor, resulting in death.  The deaths were those of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, the two felons who tried to kill Rittenhouse on August 25, 2020.

Black kept the rifle in his Kenosha home, in a gun safe, planning to give it to Rittenhouse when he turned 18.  Keep in mind an essential part of the D/S/C narrative was Rittenhouse “crossed state lines with an assault weapon to commit mass murder!!!”  Kyle did no such thing.  The rifle was never in Kyle’s possession in Illinois, where he lived. Much of Kyle’s family lived in nearby Kenosha, and he worked there.  Kenosha was as much Kyle’s hometown as was his mother’s home in Illinois.  Crossing state lines, which tens of millions of Americans do every day for work or just because they want to, is not remotely illegal—yet.

We should also keep in mind millions of Americans technically break that sort of law every day.  Parents buy firearms of all kinds for their under-18 children and allow them to constructively “possess” them.  Even D/S/C prosecutors tend not to prosecute parents for that sort of technical violation as most are smart enough not to stir up Deplorable domestic terrorists that way.  More on the legal issues shortly; let’s visit Newsmax.com for the current story:

The man who bought Kyle Rittenhouse an assault-style rifle when he was only 17 has agreed to plead no contest to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a non-criminal citation, and avoid convictions on the two felonies he’d been facing.

Since that Newsmax article was posted, Judge Schroeder signed off on the plea agreement.  The case is over.

Black was the first prosecution witness at Rittenhouse’s trial, but the status of his own charges were up in the air after Judge Bruce Schroeder agreed to throw out one of the charges against Rittenhouse — that he unlawfully possessed a firearm as a minor. The defense convinced Schroeder that an exception in the law allows 17-year-olds to possess rifles and shotguns, or at least left the law too vague to be enforceable.

That was an issue hanging over Kyle until the end of his trial.  He too was charged under that Wisconsin law—a misdemeanor among a seas of felonies—but Judge Schroeder finally came to understand what the defense had been saying all along: the law was so poorly written it did indeed make Kyle’s possession of the AR-15 at 17 legal.  Either that, or it was so confusing, the average person could not know what was and was not illegal.  That’s another fortunate feature of our Constitution.  If a person of ordinary intelligence can’t read a law and know what is and is not illegal, it’s unconstitutional—void for vagueness.  That charge was dismissed by the judge just before jury deliberations.

Could the prosecutors get any weirder? Of course they could!

That charge was just another attempt by the desperate and corrupt prosecutors to get Kyle on something, anything.  Obviously, because the law had not changed, it was not illegal for Black to buy or keep the rifle for Kyle.  An honest prosecutor would never have charged Kyle or Black in the first place, but those who have followed the case at SMM know the prosecutors were not honest, perhaps not even emotionally stable.  An honest prosecutor, post-Rittenhouse verdict, would have dismissed the case against Black, but again, a corrupt prosecutor would not.

Remember: Kyle was acquitted.  His actions were lawful self-defense.  Rosembaum and Huber died, but because of their own criminal actions.  This alone should, cause an honest, honorable prosecutor to invalidate the charges against Black, resulting in their dismissal.

So Prosecutor Thomas Binger made the plea deal, allowing Black to plead to what amounts to a traffic ticket, though he did impose a $2000 fine.  Isn’t $2000 ridiculously stiff for such a minor, ticketable offense?  Of course it is.  So why would Black accept that deal?

Going to trial, just to vindicate a principle, is always a crapshoot.  Not only would a trial run up legal fees in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars, there is always the very real possibility of a conviction on two felony counts.  An appeal would be even more costly.  That’s a particular danger in this case because it would have been another high profile trial relating to the Rittenhouse case, grabbing national attention.  Might a local jury, upset because they didn’t get Kyle, take it out on Black?  That’s certainly a possibility.

Black took the rational and safe outcome, which would not only save him a great deal of money, but leave him with no felony record, no record that would have an adverse affect on his future.  He pled no contest to a crime he didn’t really commit to avoid the destruction of his life by being found guilty of a crime the prosecution knew he didn’t commit.

Clearly, this was nothing more than an attempt by Binger to try to salvage something of his reputation with a meaningless conviction and a fine far in excess of what is normal and usual for such offenses.  To rational, honorable people, Binger threw away his reputation long ago, and this plea deal does nothing other than illustrating the charge should never have been brought, and should later have been dismissed.

At PJ Media, Megan Fox provides a video by attorney Nick Rekeita.  He covered the Rittenhouse case, and makes the point the AR was never actually owned by Kyle.  It was loaned to Kyle that night by Black, but intended that it be returned to his gun safe, unfired, when Kyle no longer needed it that night.  Take the link to see Rekeita’s video on the issue.

Rekeita agrees the charges against Black should never have been brought.  He further points out this kind of plea deal—turning multiple felonies into essentially a traffic ticket—is any defense attorney’s dream.

Rekeita also points out Black plead no contest to a charge that probably had no factual basis.  Judges aren’t supposed to accept plea deals unless there is a factual basis to prove the charge to which a defendant pleads, or in this case, pleads no contest.  Judges shouldn’t let people plead to crimes they didn’t commit.  No doubt, Judge Schroeder and everyone else involved in this mess wanted to put it behind them as quickly as possible.  And in truth, judges let people plead to crimes they didn’t commit thousands of times every day.  It’s necessary to clear trial calendars, and during my police days, I saw that hundreds of times.

So what remains in the Rittenhouse prosecutorial debacle?  The charges against Joshua Ziminski.  Ziminski was the friend of Rosembaum’s, who fired a shot that arguably began the chain of imminent events that forced Kyle, within mere minutes, to defend his life against four separate attacks.

Joshua Ziminski, 35, of Racine, was charged with arson of property other than a building, a felony, and disorderly conduct-use of a dangerous weapon. His wife Kelly Ziminski, 30, was charged in December with several misdemeanors for her actions at the same time.

The charges filed Tuesday allege the couple were at the protests on Aug. 25. According to the complaint, video on Kelly Ziminski’s phone showed Joshua Ziminski tossing a match into a dumpster and then asking the crowd for lighter fluid to help the fire spread. He then pushed the dumpster into Sheridan Road as police vehicles were moving toward him. Kelly Ziminski is seen on video adding flammable material to the fire, according to the complaint.

All of this was saved until well after Kyle’s trial because the prosecution didn’t want those issues in that trial.  They would have tended to expose the narrative as the pack of lies it was and continues to be.  Trayvon Martin continues to be venerated as an innocent, scholarly, budding aviator, cruelly murdered by a racist, profiling white Hispanic because he was carrying Skittles and happened to be wearing a hoodie.  Michael Brown said “hands up; don’t shoot.” It’s doubtful anyone will push that kind of narrative over Rosenbaum or Huber, but the false narrative about Kyle will never die.

I’ll keep any eye on what happens with Ziminski and his wife.  Don’t expect much from the prosecutors.  They didn’t want to charge them, or any of the “protestors” in the first place.