The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday could put the 18-year-old defendant in a prime position to launch a flurry of defamation lawsuits against media outlets and personalities who dubbed him a “white supremacist” and even likened him to a “school shooter” after he shot and killed two men in self-defense during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.
Numerous outlets also spread misinformation about the case, called Rittenhouse a “vigilante,” and matter-of-factly stated his guilt in the deaths of two men and wounding of another. A jury on Friday found Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges after determining he acted in self-defense during the August 2020 riots in the town where his father lived. Now, say experts, whether Rittenhouse can win damages in civil suits could boil down to whether a jury finds the media’s language was defamatory, opinion, or rhetorical hyperbole.
“There is no question he suffered reputation damage,” Michael Toebe, a reputations and communications specialist based out of Wichita, Kansas, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
Long before the jury issued its verdict, media pundits railed against Rittenhouse for his decision to be armed with an AR-15-style rifle amid rioting in Kenosha. A guest on MSNBC compared Rittenhouse to a “school shooter” on Sept. 1, 2020, while another network contributor said he is “arguably a domestic terrorist” on the same day. The network’s star host Joy Reid referred to him as a “vigilante,” and journalist Tariq Nasheed has labeled the defendant as a “suspected white supremacist,” a title also given to Judge Bruce Schroeder, who presided over the trial.
President Joe Biden notably weighed in on the case before he took office in a tweeted video of the violence in Kenosha, which included an image of Rittenhouse carrying the rifle, and then linked it to earlier events in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists held an infamous rally in 2017.
“There’s no other way to put it: The president of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night,” Biden said on Sept. 30, 2020, referring to former President Donald Trump.
Former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz predicted that if acquitted, Rittenhouse will “bring lawsuits” against outlets that labeled him with terms implying he’s guilty.
“It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s the New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” Dershowitz said on Newsmax on Saturday.
Even branding Rittenhouse a “vigilante” could be problematic for media companies, said Kentucky-based attorney Todd McMurtry, who represented Nicholas Sandmann, the former Covington Catholic High School student who settled defamation suits against the Washington Post and CNN after they mischaracterized his encounter with a Native American man at the 2019 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.
“A vigilante, per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is ‘a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress or punish crimes summarily.’ That’s not what he was doing,” McMurtry said. “So it’s a statement and arguably made negligently. To call someone a vigilante is defamatory, and so I think that could be actionable.”
Sandmann penned an op-ed in the Daily Mail Tuesday, saying, “The parallels between me and Kyle Rittenhouse are impossible not to draw.”
FIVE MOMENTS IN RITTENHOUSE TRIAL THAT COULD SWAY JURY
SUPERCUT!
Media: Why do reporting when we already know Rittenhouse is a terrorist? pic.twitter.com/abebdPyiIs
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 9, 2021
McMurtry told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday he thinks Dershowitz is “100% correct” and that “he ought to step forward” and represent Rittenhouse. The attorney also said Rittenhouse should be aware of the statute of limitations for filing defamation claims, saying any media claim made about him when he was 17 would no longer be actionable after he turns 19.
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Toebe said the defendant’s name “might still be long associated with killing, even if not murder, and a felon who got off.”
“That’s a heavy burden to carry through what could be a long life. Did the media contribute to it? That would be the argument,” Toebe added. “Who’s better in the trenches, the attorneys for the plaintiff or attorney? Who can prove what and how successfully is what matters legally.”
