Thread by @auronburner

Today in Kenosha, a jury found #KyleRittenhouse not guilty on all counts.

They reached the legally, and I believe morally, correct verdict.

The system worked...this time. But let's take the opportunity to talk about how it sometimes doesn't, and came close to failing here.🧵

Rittenhouse was fortunate enough to have the things a defendant is supposed to have, competent counsel and a sympathetic judge. Not perfect counsel, mind you, as a defense attorney myself I could backseat-lawyer them all day, but they did an overall good job.

A lot of people had concerns about the impartiality of Judge Schroeder, who repeatedly intervened on the defendant's behalf and seemed to hold the prosecution to higher standards than the defense. But this is actually how the system is SUPPOSED to work. It just...doesn't always

The state has an enormous advantage of power, resources, and credibility. They have nearly infinite money, if they choose to allocate it to a particular case, they can compel people to do what they want with powerful carrots and sticks, like favorable plea deals.

And moreover, while average folks assume defendants and defense attorneys will lie and act out of selfish motives, they trust cops and prosecutors to act in the interests of justice. That trust is sometimes misplaced, as has been seen with some of the prosecution's behavior here

As a consequence of this, the system is MEANT to be somewhat stacked in the defendant's favor to counteract this power imbalance. EVERY judge should be a "defendant's judge", and hold the state to the highest standards of conduct, especially concerning constitutional rights.

So to my friends on the left, I would ask: do not forget your values because you don't like this young man. Just because the system fails some other people, don't demand it become similarly broken for everyone.

And to those on the right, please remember the injustices you saw attempted here. The pile-on of legally baseless charges, the shady behavior of the prosecutors, and believe people when we tell you THOSE THINGS ARE NOT UNIQUE TO THIS CASE!

You saw what prosecutors do when cameras are pointed at them and thousands of people are watching. Imagine what they try to pull when nobody's watching, the judge is a prosecutor in robes, and the public defender is half asleep!

Is that ALL prosecutors? No, certainly not. The overwhelming majority of those I've sat across from have been upstanding officers of the court. But it's enough to be a real problem, and the ones that do it, usually get away with it for a LONG TIME, and the system enables them.

Please look into things like coercive plea bargaining (if you're conservative, this should be of particular interest to you right now, given what happened with the Q shaman and other January 6th defendants), unreasonable bail denials, and prosecutorial misconduct.

It's often far too easy to take a person's freedom away because of an accusation. That outrage you've felt over Kyle, and over J6 defendants? Many of us on the left who advocate for #CriminalJusticeReform have felt it for years. And now I hope you see why. #KyleRittenhouse