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Home » The ceremony of innocence: the Rittenhouse trial

The ceremony of innocence: the Rittenhouse trial

The New Neo Posted on by

The Rittenhouse trial has been particularly awful – and for me it’s also been quite emotional to watch, especially yesterday when Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand. The decision to have him testify surprised me greatly, and last night I watched most of his testimony and was even more horrified by the situation in which this young man has been placed.

That situation began in August of 2020 when several seemingly-unhinged and aggressively hostile men attacked the then-17-year-old in a nightmare scenario that led to Kyle shooting and killing two of them and shooting and wounding a third. Each time he only fired when his life seemed gravely in danger. There is no question in my mind that it was self-defense, and that it was also an intensely traumatic evening. His testimony yestreday made that trauma even more clear when he broke down in huge shuddering sobs when forced to describe being surrounded by that hostile group.

But his attackers were an uncontrolled mob, and one of them (Rosenbaum) was apparently genuinely mentally ill. What’s prosecutor Binger’s excuse?

What do I mean by that last question? By any ordinary legal definition of justifiable self-defense, Rittenhouse is not guilty of murder and Binger must know that because he knows the law. He chose to prosecute Rittenhouse anyway. Perhaps it was out of a desire for fame, perhaps Rittenhouse just rubs him the wrong way, perhaps Binger wanted to appease and placate the mob, perhaps he’s a leftist and it was political, or perhaps he’s just a sadistic person with no moral sense whatsoever. Or perhaps some combination of those things. Whatever Binger’s reasons, his performance yesterday and even before that has been repugnant and vile, and yesterday those qualities increased exponentially.

I can’t ever remember detesting an attorney to such a degree before, but there it is. Binger spoke with much venom and contempt to Rittenhouse, but he spoke with snide contempt even to the judge who was reprimanding him. Binger must know the judge is probably highly reluctant, in such a high-profile trial, to declare the “mistrial with prejudice” that Binger so richly deserves, and so I believe that Binger feels free to play a game of chicken with the judge. I’m not even sure how much of a chance Binger thinks he still has to convict Rittenhouse, but he continues to march on in a remarkably offensive, smarmy, duplicitous manner. As they say, the process is the punishment, for Rittenhouse (you can watch here).

But Binger also knows that juries are unpredictable and sometimes illogical, and that this one just might convict Rittenhouse even though there is no evidential support for a guilty verdict. Juries have done stranger things at times, and every single member of this jury has probably been exposed to enormous anti-Rittenhouse propaganda, including the fact that Joe Biden (as candidate Biden) said he was a white supremacist.

If Rittenhouse is found guilty of murder and the conviction stands, that will tell us the rule of law is finished in this country. Maybe it already is; it’s not the first time I’ve felt a similar sentiment recently. For example, there was the Chauvin verdict (which seemed highly unjustified to me at the time but which at least seems more arguably evidence-based than a guilty verdict for Rittenhouse would ever be), the Flynn case, and also the treatment of the January 6th defendants.

I’ve already written about how the Rittenhouse prosecution reminds me of one work of literature, “Billy Budd.” Two more things came to mind for me last night when I was mulling all of this over. The first was a poem I’ve quoted many times before, each time for a different purpose. There’s always something new to be found in it: Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” Today I want to call attention to these lines:

…Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

It’s unclear exactly what Yeats meant by the phrase “the ceremony of innocence.” But to me, the lines fit the Rittenhouse case very well. The mobs in Kenosha, and the abdication of the authorities who seemed to have given up on controlling them, was and is anarchy (some of the rioters were actually anarchists). Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old teenager who was there to do good, with the idealism that youth often possesses. What happened to him was horrific, and I don’t just mean at the hands of the mob, or the scars he will bear forever from ending two human lives. I also mean what is happening to him at the hands of the state. If he is acquitted it will be far far better than if he is found guilty, but he still will have been abused by the legal system. Innocence is drowned, indeed.

The second thing that came to my mind last night is that what happened to Kyle in Kenosha that awful night in August of 2020 somewhat resembled a movie. So many of them feature an innocent person being chased, but the film that came to mind for me was from a movie obscure enough that I can’t automatically assume that very many of you have ever seen it. It’s the Scorcese film “After Hours,” usually described as a “black comedy” (can we still use that phrase?). I saw the movie when it came out in the mid-80s and liked it. It’s funny, frightening, and surreal all at once; an extremely quirky movie.

Here’s the trailer, which has a bit of the scene I’m talking about, in which an angry mob chases the main character for essentially no reason at all. The film is a comedy, as I said, but it has some scenes that are menacing and truly frightening (at least for me), and that was one. The chase part begins at 1:08 in this trailer:

For today’s proceedings in the trial, I recommend Legal Insurrection’s live feed and comments, and then later tonight Andrew Branca is slated to have his usual lengthy summary. Yesterday’s summary – “Kyle Survives Abusive Cross-Examination”- can be found here.

Comments

The ceremony of innocence: the Rittenhouse trial — 39 Comments

  1. “repugnant and vile”

    Thank you Neo – those are the exact words I was looking for to describe my feelings toward this “trial” and especially towards that Prosecutor. He does come across as some sort of TV/movie caricature of the worst lawyer writers could dream up.

    While not nice of me to say I do believe there is a special place “down there” for this prosecutor. He isn’t stupid, he must know what he is doing to that young man. And he doesn’t care which makes his behavior all that more despicable.

    The way he has tried to put words into someone’s mouth is disgusting! He did so with Rittenhouse; and watching the trial on Court TV today I’ve watched him do the same today with other witnesses. He clearly has no shame. I can only hope that his behavior is going to backfire on his case and the jurors are as repulsed by him as we are; and thereby vote to find not guilty.

    But, and as you say, the punishment of putting Rittenhouse through this trauma has already been done.

    I said it in response to an earlier post and I’ll say it again – there is something messed up with our society when we, as a society, put someone like Rittenhouse on trial and praise the likes of George Floyd as some sort of hero.

  3. What’s prosecutor Binger’s excuse?

    Indeed. I caught a bit of Alan Dersh. on Fox last night and he claimed that Binger was angling for a mistrial. To the point of intentionally tainting the proceedings. He claimed it was a very sorry but common practice. It’s beyond my knowledge.

    I also saw a snippet over at Breitbart from AWR Hawkins about Binger or his #2 going on about horrible exploding hollow point bullets. Trouble is, Rittenhouse never had any hollow point bullets. And they don’t explode. And they are routinely used in defensive situations, by cops especially.

  4. I just read a bit on line that some of the lefty major cities are gearing up for people taking to the streets if Kyle is acquitted, Chicago has extra police standing by which is totally nuts. Instead of all of the leaders saying they will stand by the outcome of a trial and respect the lawful judicial process they are already firing up emotions to create riot, mayhem, loot pillage and plunder.

    Perhaps the Antifa and BLM actors have already been hired and the Federal instigators put on alert, charter buses and planes standing by for more street theater performances and I hope I am wrong.

  5. The prosecution keeps pointing out that if Rittenhouse hadn’t gone to Kenosha none of this would have happened. Ego, he’s guilty of going to a riot and disobeying curfew orders.

    My questions to the prosecutors would be:
    1. Weren’t the rioters guilty of the same ? Weren’t the rioters there to destroy property and lives?
    2. If the elected authorities had mobilized to defend their citizens’ property and lives, would Rittenhouse and others like him have gone to Kenosha to help defend lives and property?
    3. When you see a man armed with a gun, do you expect to attack that person without expectation of being shot? Why then do think Rittenhouse should not use his openly carried gun to defend himself when attacked?

    The prosecution doesn’t want to acknowledge the plain facts of the case.

  6. neo —

    Also a fan of “After Hours”. I hadn’t thought about it in the context of Kyle Rittenhouse, but it does seem to encapsulate the Kafkaesque nature of events these days.

  8. J.J.:

    And the prosecutors are well aware that their arguments have zero to do with the law. They are cynically calculating that the jury will be motivated by bias and emotion as well as previous propaganda.

  9. OldTexan:

    No question in my mind that we will see large Antifa/BLM riots if Rittenhouse is acquitted.

    The only contrary hope I can see is if the Dem leadership realizes that riots will make 2022 elections worse. However, I don’t think the Dems can entirely stop the radicals now. They may be able to shorten the duration by taking handcuffs off law enforcement.

  10. “I said it in response to an earlier post and I’ll say it again – there is something messed up with our society when we, as a society, put someone like Rittenhouse on trial and praise the likes of George Floyd as some sort of hero.” Charles

    There are and have been since at least Clinton’s Presidency, two American societies. One collectivist and increasingly Marxist and one dedicated to “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” Thomas Jefferson.

    It is the collectivist America that has put Rittenhouse on trial and that praises the likes of George Floyd as some sort of hero.

  11. It’s unclear exactly what Yeats meant by the phrase “the ceremony of innocence.”

    “Ceremony of innocence” is usually understood as a reference to Christian baptism, in which a child born in original sin is restored to humankind’s original created innocence through a sacramental ceremony. Yeats was born into a Protestant family during the waning years of the so-called Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, but considered himself an agnostic and dabbled in spiritualism and astrology during his later years as an Irish nationalist. He would, however, have known about the significance of baptism, and it is telling that he is buried in the churchyard of St. Columba’s, a Church of Ireland (basically Anglican, hence Protestant) parish in County Sligo.

    The “blood-dimmed tide” that “drowned” the ceremony of innocence is commonly interpreted as a reference to the mass slaughter of WWI. Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, when the human cost of the Great War had become horrifically apparent to the survivors.

  12. PA Cat:

    I was already aware of that common interpretation as well as others of a more general nature. That’s why I wrote that it’s unclear EXACTLY what Yeats meant.

  13. To PACat’s pointing to baptism as perhaps the source of the imagery, I think Yeats is simply pointing out that humanity’s innocence was always a charade, drowned in the rivers of blood from our evil acts. Of course, it is WWI that lead Yeats to this belief.

  14. Pharmakos. It’s not where you go to stock up on Depends and Statins.

    From the Little Green Man on Mars perspective, it’s interesting just how quickly all the Old Gods (*) are coming back to town all over the West.

    Everything Old is New Again.

    * No. Not you, Ymar.

  15. TommyJay: “I caught a bit of Alan Dersh on Fox last night and he claimed that Binger was angling for a mistrial. To the point of intentionally tainting the proceedings.”

    It is funny that you posted that – I was thinking just last night that if the prosecutor really wanted to NOT prosecute but was forced to he would try to do what these guys were doing. But, I took off my tin foil hat saying to myself, nah, nobody would be foolish enough to try that since you never know how it would turn out. You just might win!

    Also, wouldn’t such a tactic ruin one’s reputation as a lawyer?

    I mean, couldn’t they, wouldn’t they just approach the judge to say that in their opinion the grand jury made a mistake by indicting someone? Or is that not allowed by law?

  18. “And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
    Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
    For arrogance and hatred are the wares
    Peddled in the thoroughfares.
    How but in custom and in ceremony
    Are innocence and beauty born?
    Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
    And custom for the spreading laurel tree.”

  19. The young Rittenhouse struck me as intelligent, self-controlled, and authentic. I found his emotion heartfelt. I would note that PTSD among soldiers is often the consequence of doing what soldiers do, bringing deadly force to bear on the enemy. Most normal compassionate people do not kill indiscriminately.

    I pray he is acquitted and has a second chance at adulting.

  20. Neo, I think Binger’s behavior is explained by your post from yesterday:

    The long shadow of false accusations: “White Hispanic” George Zimmerman is still being demonized as though he’s guilty.

    Zimmerman was so thoroughly smeared and defamed by the Left, and especially the news media, that his acquittal means nothing. A huge chunk of the populace was brainwashed into believing he was guilty, and no amount of evidence or reasoned argument will ever convince them otherwise. The narrative has completely obliterated the truth.

    This is what Binger intends to do. He knows that he can’t convict Rittenhouse on the basis of evidence or law. So he’s building a narrative that may sway the jury, but it doesn’t really matter whether they buy into it or not. He knows that the news media and the activists of the Left will embrace his narrative and spread it far and wide, drowning out the truth of what really happened. The goal is to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse in the eyes of the public, regardless of whether he is convicted or acquitted. And it will work, too.

    The judge and the jury are no longer relevant. Laws and evidence have ceased to matter. We don’t live in a society in which guilt or innocence are determined by reality or truth. Mob justice reigns supreme, and if the Left decides that you need to be destroyed, then nothing can save you.

  21. This prosecutor is the same type as the one who conducted a murder case that I chosen to be a juror. He began his opening with a broken bat in his hand, swinging and hitting it against his other hand. There was no bat involved in the case at all. It was a matter of a young man shooting another man who had already shot him months before. The man killed was also trying to kill the man on trial.
    At that time in Louisiana, person could be found guilty if even two people thought he was innocent. I held out. The other woman wanted to leave on vacation so she gave in and he was sentenced to life in prison for killing someone trying to kill him. It turned out the jury foreman also was a neighbor of the man who was killed.
    I have not trusted justice at all since then. Things happen, and not for the good. I am a conservative but I know rich get off, poor go to prison.

  23. I can’t ever remember detesting an attorney to such a degree before, but there it is.

    You came of age after the Era of Nifong?

  24. }}} I’m not even sure how much of a chance Binger thinks he still has to convict Rittenhouse, but he continues to march on in a remarkably offensive, smarmy, duplicitous manner.

    In addition to the grandstanding for the liberal masses, it is quite possible that he’s looking for the judge to dismiss with prejudice, because then he can blame the loss on the judge, and not on the fact that he’s got zero case… if they find KR “not guilty”, then that’s both a negative mark on Binger’s record and a negative for those expecting him to do the impossible and convict someone so blatantly not guilty. Unlike the case with “I can’t breathe”, he’s not trying to convict eeeevil raaaacist cops.

  25. ErisGuy:

    I only read about Nifong and never saw or heard him. It takes hearing and seeing, ordinarily, to reach that type of revulsion for a person.

  27. William Jacobson (of Legal Insurrection):
    “The media framed Kyle Rittenhouse — and won’t come clean even after the prosecution’s case falls apart”
    https://nypost.com/2021/11/11/the-media-framed-kyle-rittenhouse-and-wont-come-clean-even-after-the-prosecutions-case-falls-apart/

    Key graf:
    “Media malpractice has come full circle in Kenosha, Wis.”

    + Bonus:
    Hmmm.
    “Hunter Biden leaves NYC as gallery cancels plan to let the public see his paintings”
    https://nypost.com/2021/11/11/hunter-biden-leaves-nyc-as-gallery-cancels-plan-to-let-the-public-see-his-paintings/

  28. Heh…
    Greenwald hits another grand slam…
    “Democrats Are Profoundly Committed to Criminal Justice Reform — For Everyone But Their Enemies”
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1458811868710150152
    H/T Ron Coleman twitter feed.

    + this outrage:
    “Federal prosecutors yesterday demanded a prison term of more than **4 years** for a 1/6 protester they admit was non-violent. Even though he’s already been imprisoned 9 months with no trial, virtually no Dem objects because his *ideology* is criminal…”
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1458881914853597188
    Etc., etc., etc.
    Well, a rogue regime—intent on making the USA a third-world s%^$hole—gotta rogue….

  30. I have a jury summons for the end of January.

    I suppose I can take the oath, playing the odds that I won’t get on jury, and that if I did it would probably not be an earth-shattering case.

    But I have a much lower regard for the FBI and, in liberal Cleveland the legal system as a hole.

  31. “The ceremony of ‘innocence’…”
    Gage Grosskreutz—professional “victim” and one of the “heroes” of the Prosecution—interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America”…

    Viewer warning: Have airplane motion sickness bag ready and open….
    https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1458781171282845698
    – – – – – –
    Dershowitz with a timely reminder:
    https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/dershowitz-rittenhouse/2021/11/11/id/1044345/

  33. So long since I read Yeats or poetry in general. Thank you, Neo. The Second Coming conjures our current moment perfectly and painfully. So much more terrifying now than when I read it in college.

    For me, the phrase “Ceremony of Innocence” probably does reference religion but feels more primitive than that. I think Yeats is simply telling us our norms and laws and civilization are all fragile – a ceremony of innocence – that collapses
    when “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” The adjective “mere” is jarring. Anarchy is easy if the ceremony of innocence is abandoned as we are allowing to happen now.

  35. charles,
    As I said, Dershowitz’s point is way outside my knowledge, but you ask a couple interesting questions. One possible reason for angling for a mistrial might be to take a mulligan. That is, a do over.

    It must be true that the prosecutor believes that the politically advantageous thing for him to do is to act tough on Rittenhouse. If he asks for a dismissal it damages him politically. If the judge declares a mistrial then the onus and blow-back is on the judge, and the prosecutor’s hands are clean.

    If the prosecutor is really a jerk, he might envision prosecuting Rittenhouse over and over as a form of punishment.

    Should this reflect badly on the prosecutor? Of course, but you can’t prove it and beyond that it I wouldn’t know.

  36. EricGuys: I can’t ever remember detesting an attorney to such a degree before, but there it is. – You came of age after the Era of Nifong?

    Neo: I only read about Nifong and never saw or heard him. It takes hearing and seeing, ordinarily, to reach that type of revulsion for a person.

    I will say the same. What Nifong and others like him did was most likely about the same level of disgust that Binger is doing. But, I didn’t get consumed by those cases because I didn’t watch any of the videos.

    But, the Rittenhouse case I did see videos of at least one of the shootings before the trial began. That got me to invest more of my time into watching the trial. Being off from work yesterday I ended spending the better part of my afternoon watching the case on Court TV. Yuck! Did Binger disgust me even more!

    And, yea, maybe those other prosecutors behaved just as badly; but, I didn’t watch them. And there was a certain revulsion at watching Binger’s bad behavior. He just made my blood boil!

    I remember him trying to put words into Rittenhouse’s mouth when he tried, not once, not twice, but three times to get Kyle to say that he intended to use deadly force. Kyle kept saying no, he didn’t intend to kill anyone, his intent was to stop the attack. It was just real sleazy behavior on Binger’s part. I couldn’t understand why the judge didn’t stop him (I think the defense didn’t object because he knew this bad behavior might work in their favor by showing how sleazy the prosecutor was). It was quite revolting to watch!

    And then there was also Binger’s body language when the judge was reprimanding him for trying to twist Rittenhouse’s “silence” before the trial into a sign that Rittenhouse was guilty. Binger looked like he was thinking of an excuse to “get back at the judge” as if to say I am smarter than you – how dare you stop me! The arrogance displayed was revolting.

    There are several other examples as well – but, I assume most here have watched part of the trial.

    While what Nifong and others like him did was revolting, watching Binger conduct himself during the trial adds to the disgust.

    Lastly, and this is totally irrational on my part, Binger reminds me of the character “Stuart” on the TV show “Spin City” played by Alan Ruck. The Character of Stuart was a total narcissist and a sleazy person. It isn’t just Binger’s looks that he reminds me of Stuart – he comes across as a real-life sleazy narcissist like Stuart. Except the character of Stuart was intended to be funny – Binger isn’t at all funny.

    And EricGuy, I’ll bet you’re right in that Nifong and others like him might be just as disgusting. But, fortunately for my sanity I didn’t see any of them; I just read about them. It was good news to hear that Nifong was disbarred. Can we hope for something similar with Binger? So far he doesn’t seemed to have broken any laws; but, time will tell.

  37. i too have pondered “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    I think it means everyone/everything is tainted by this anarchy. The imagery of this tide overcoming all, corrupting everything is its wake is what these lines mean to me.

    I love your site. thank you.

  38. I’m pretty sure according to George Will the ceremony of innocence is baseball.

    When Yeats was on, he was on.

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