After Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges stemming from two fatal shootings in the United States, US President Joe Biden put himself in the firing line of progressives for claiming that the jury system works and that ‘we have to abide by it’.
Credit has to be given to President Biden for trying to calm the situation, for calling for the verdict to be accepted and for any demonstrations to be peaceful. Undoubtedly the demonstrations will not be so as the Rittenhouse trial was one that has divided the United States – and beyond – much more for what it symbolises, for who and what the different actors in the trial represent, than for any factual or evidential disagreement.
From the moment one of Rittenhouse’s assailants – who he also shot but not fatally – Gaige Grosskreutz – admitted that he had pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse just before he was shot, the outcome of the trial felt like it had to only go one way, although the circumstances surrounding the shootings, meant that it was never going to be a clear cut decision accepted by all.
Yet, President Biden prevaricated. His acceptance of the decision of the jury did not come with a caveat. He is angry.
The politicisation and polarisation of every action in the US in relation to the police, guns, race, does not help the situation.
The partisanship of the media only makes things worse – and that is reflected across the Atlantic as well as only partial information is shared, and the framing of stories such as this one through the lens of race where one group is always on the side of the angels and the other nothing but evil, par for the course.
President Biden is no angel in this case – where in the run-up to the presidential election with Donald Trump, he tweeted a video that included Rittenhouse carrying a rifle with the caption: “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.”
The video was meant to criticize then-President Donald Trump but it also assumed a 17 year old teenager to be a particular type of person, with associations to particular types of groups. There was, and still is, no evidence for this brush tarring.
The President of course has no choice but to accept the decision of the jury. Trial by jury is one of the fundamentals that a democratic system is built upon. Every citizen is entitled to a trial by a jury of his/her peers. This is because in the understanding of the law, it is not through the eyes of a philosopher, a theorist, a politician, or some form of elite establishment aristocracy that decision of guilt or innocence are decided, but by a group of average joes and how, under the guidance of a Judge who explains what the law is to them, assess the actions of the accused. This aspect of the judicial system is one of the great levellers. It isn’t perfect: nothing is.
But those who consider themselves to be better educated, or more often, consider others to be too uneducated, too unsophisticated or too uncouth to be decision-makers in such situations, this is very frustrating.
But this is how the law is supposed to work. It is how law evolved in terms of fairness. It moved from a system where the elite ruled over the plebs to one where the green shoots of democracy began to grow. You are assessed by your peers who judge your actions with their understanding of the law and right and wrong, and not through the disinterested eyes of lord in an ivory tower.
Trial by jury has been around since the 12th Century in common law systems, yet now there are those who disagree with President Biden and say that the system is broken. This is because they think that it does not reach the ‘correct’ conclusions: that the common person cannot be trusted to be unbiased, to understand the complexities of the law, or to rationalise all that they hear in these complex cases.
President Biden said, despite having to abide by the decision of the jury, that “the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included”. This is the confusing part – the Jesuitical part – of President Biden’s response. Why would the President be angry? The Jury heard the evidence, and made the decision. The system has done its job. Justice has been done and been seen to be done.
Perhaps the President is angry at the situation that arose, but it is the verdict he says that he is angry with. The verdict is that Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty. The President himself admitted he did not watch the trial. It cannot be that he has placed himself in the position of a jury member, hearing and weighing up, and is now angry that they do not see the facts as he sees them.
He seems to be angry that a teenager did not get sent to jail, possibly for life, for something that he has been found not guilty of doing. Being angry makes no sense but it does place the President in the same position of those that are going to riot in response to the verdict. They too are angry. And the President, despite his calls for calm and peaceful protests, legitimises their anger, and with that, undermines the judicial system he claims to uphold.
Maybe the President, like his predecessor, feels that he needs to side with his support base come hell or high water, and this trumps all else. Being angry at justice being done runs counter to claiming to “remain steadfast in my commitment to do everything in my power to ensure that every American is treated equally, with fairness and dignity, under the law” and taking a partisan position on the outcome of the substantive procedural justice that had been enacted.
It is important to know that this was not an off-the-cuff statement by the President, this was a White House Press release, carefully scripted to appear balanced yet still play to the gallery.
Dualta Roughneen