Yet another failure for the prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse: The judge presiding over the homicide trial tossed another charge against the 18-year-old on Monday.
Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder concluded that the misdemeanor count of possession of a dangerous weapon under the age of 18 could not stand because the barrel size of the rifle Rittenhouse carried the night he shot and killed two people does not technically fit Wisconsin’s gun law.
The law in question is Wisconsin Statute 948.60(2)(a), which states, “Any person under 18 years of age who possesses or goes armed with a dangerous weapon is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.” However, a third section under the law grants certain exemptions and says the law only applies to persons under 18 years of age carrying a gun who are found in violation of or not in compliance with three rules: The first bans short-barreled shotguns or short-barreled rifles, the second restricts “hunting and use of firearms by persons under 16 years of age,” and the third requires persons who plan to hunt to be licensed.
Rittenhouse’s defense team acknowledged he violated the third rule, which would require him to be licensed to carry a weapon used for hunting. But the other two rules do not apply, they argued, because Rittenhouse’s AR-style weapon is not a short-barreled shotgun nor a short-barreled rifle and because Rittenhouse was 17 years old, not 16 years old, at the time of the shooting.
This was enough for Schroeder, who conceded the Wisconsin law was “poorly worded” and dropped the charge.
The reason this is so important is because, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy noted, the misdemeanor possession charge was “critical to the prosecution’s legal claim that, by committing this possession crime, Rittenhouse somehow waved his right to self-defense.”
This argument was always far-fetched, as the past week of testimony has confirmed. Rittenhouse was clearly being pursued by the men he shot, and they clearly intended to harm his person. He did the only thing he could do: He defended himself.
The prosecution, however, was bent on charging Rittenhouse with every single count they could think of to make a political point, and now, they’re facing the consequences. This is the second charge against Rittenhouse that has been tossed. The first was another minor charge that alleged he violated Kenosha’s curfew the night of the riot. Apparently, the prosecution failed to document the curfew’s existence, therefore failing to prove Rittenhouse violated it.
Prosecutors overplayed their hand and are now left with a handful of felony charges (first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree recklessly endangering safety, first-degree intentional homicide, and first-degree reckless endangerment) that could very well be struck down by a jury that finds Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. Let’s hope that that is, indeed, the jury’s verdict.
