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People are having trouble grasping the full legal import of this. This is mostly about legal implications, not moral ones. It doesn't really inform questions about why he was there in the first place, why he was carrying a gun, etc. I'll leave those normative qs to others. 1/
Legally speaking, this is not as much of an open-and-shut case as it appeared yesterday AM. The defense will likely center around a self-defense argument. As of last evening, I thought that argument would fail. He might have had it for the second/third shootings 2/
because he was being pursued by at least one armed individual, but that still left the first shooting to account for, and from what we'd seen that appeared cold-blooded. 3/
This random gunshot right before he opens fire the *first* time complicates things. His defense now likely becomes that he was being pursued/retreating, heard a gunshot nearby, thought he was being fired upon, and returned fire. 4/
Still a lot of unanswered questions! Why was he being chased? Had he discharged his weapon on rioters, and that's why he was being chased the first time? Is there going to be a lot of evidence about him telling people he wanted to kill a bunch of protestors before he went up? 5/
Self-defense is usually an affirmative defense (haven't checked on Wisconsin) which means he's going to have to prove it. So it's hardly a slam dunk. But if you think this NY Times timeline isn't important *for the trial* you're probably mistaken. 6/
There are a lot more facts likely to come out, none of this precludes an argument that he shouldn't have been there/shouldn't have had a gun/the system is racist, etc. Just saying how this is likely to play out on the murder 1 charge they seem to want to try and hang on him. 7/7
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