Lock Up Kyle for A While

 

I haven't written in several months. Life got busy again. My writing spree was allowed due to kids being home with virtual school, no volunteer groups coming, and not having steady remote work. All of that changed, and more, thankfully, although it was fun learning about current events and developing thoughts during that time. 

Last night I learned about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. I was quite surprised to hear that he was found not guilty on all charges. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised anymore, just continually disturbed. Last February, I wrote a post (here) comparing Rittenhouse (the armed 17-year-old who killed two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020), to Brandon Bernard. Brandon Bernard was an African American man who was executed almost a year ago for being affiliated with a killing over 30 years ago when he was 18 years old, despite jurors who convicted him pleading that the decision be reversed. At that point, Rittenhouse had merely been released on bond. Now that he has been acquitted altogether, the contradiction just looks that much bigger. 

Today was one of those days where I couldn't shake my disturbance. The only way to quench it was to read up, and now to write my thoughts. I read many articles on the verdict, watched some videos from the trials, and conversed online with some folks. Perhaps what struck me the hardest was a statement by Anthony Huber's parents. This statement can be found in this article.  

Huber was the second man shot and killed that night. He was unarmed, like the first. He reacted to Rittenhouse shooting the first man, Joseph Rosenbaum, and likely sought to apprehend him and disarm him. I specifically remember my criminal law instructor telling us that self-defense is a very hard defense to establish to justify a killing. We read several cases that proved what he said, with situations like pregnant woman going to jail for killing their abusive husbands while under attack. I see that in Wisconsin it's a bit easier to establish self defense because the burden lies on the prosecution to prove that the killer did not act in self defense, rather than the burden lying on the defense, which is the norm. But even so, the key word is reasonable. The jury has to believe that the defendant acted reasonably both in believing he was in imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, and that the amount of force he used was what a reasonable person would use. 

So the jury was instructed to view the situation as a 17-year-old boy like Rittenhouse would. They were asked to view the situation where he was approached and pulled the trigger from that point of view, but they must not have been instructed to view the reasonableness of the creation of the situation itself. Was it reasonable that a 17-year-old be walking around a town he does not live in during emotional protests with a large deadly weapon like that, basically with the intention of protecting property? The situation in itself is extremely unreasonable. 

Perhaps they should've aimed for a lower charge with the killings. It's not that I want the young man locked up for his whole life, but the message this complete acquittal sends is disturbing. 

I also read that the verdict for the Ahmaud Arbery case should be decided and announced this upcoming week. I have investigated that case too. Arbery was not jogging in jogging clothes as some make it seem, (he had cargo shorts on), but was walking and jogging around the neighborhood where his family says he often jogs. He was seen on camera looking briefly into a house under construction. The cameras showed several others peeking in throughout the weeks and months prior. There was no theft, other than some little neighbor boys who took some plywood. The property owner said on the witness stand that he never asked the defendants to protect his home and he barely knows them. Both of these cases are not even in the realm of police brutality, which is trickier because of qualified immunity. The defendants are civilians practicing vigilantism. 

I don't have anything else to say and there's nothing I can do. When that is the case, the only option is to pray, (not that prayer should be a last resort, by any means). 

Lord, God, Jehovah, Yahweh, the Alpha and the Omega, the Begining and the End, please don't let them acquit those men, or at least the one that pulled the trigger. It pains me and I feel the pain of those who suffer from these injustices, this hate, this discrimination and devalution. I feel the pain of the Rittenhouse verdict and I fear the pain of an acquittal in the Arbery case. Please, may justice be served. May the jury's decision reflect your will. May there be healing. May the scales be balanced. May your kingdom come.

Amen. Below is my 4-year-old Gabriel's depiction of God. I guess he sees God as a sun-shaped house-like creature with a smile. 

 

 

Two Eighteen Year Old Boys

 I have recently seen an argument stating that you can tell if a leader is a God given authority when he or she punishes what is bad and praises what is good. Romans 13:3 was referenced, which says, "For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad." 1 Peter 2:14 was also referenced, which says, "punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good". These verses were used to argue that Donald Trump has God given authority and Joe Biden does not. It was stated that during his first few weeks as president, Joe Biden has praised those who do wrong and punished those who do good. Donald Trump did the opposite, this person argued, praising what is good and punishing what is bad.

No specific examples were given so I don't actually know what exact acts were being referred to, but I thought that this person was very bold to speak with confident discernment on all presidential decisions, classifying them as either good or bad without even an inside position for further insight. I also thought that to claim that one president discerned good and bad 100% of the time, whereas the other did the opposite 100% of the time seemed extremely oversimplified and biased.

Anyway, I don't want to continue in a discussion about Donald Trump forever, but I do want to share rebuttals when I think the Bible is being applied in a flawed way. The Bible shouldn't be anyone's tool to use politically. I believe that if it is applied accurately to all situations we face in life, then all will have the chance to see the true character of God, and his kingdom will reign.

I shared two articles in response to this claim. The first was about how Trump reinstated the death penalty at the federal level during his last months of his presidency. This article from DeathPenaltyInfo.org explains how beginning July 14, 2020, Trump pushed for more executions than had been completed at the federal level during the past 50 years to take place during his last six months as president.

In addition to that, I shared an article about the death row prisoner who people most rallied to save, from what I saw.

Brandon Bernard was executed by lethal injection on December 10, 2020 at 40 years of age. He was sentenced to the death penalty when he was 18 years old for destroying the evidence of a murder that a fellow gang member committed. He apparently did not take part in the abduction or murder but was tried beside the 19 year old who did. The young man who committed the murder was executed previously.

This article and others tell about how Brandon had not had one complaint filed about him while in prison, but showed deep remorse. Five of the nine living jurors who convicted him also asked that he be spared. Brandon's legal team tried to delay the decision, but were not given any grace.

On the other hand, we see situations like Kyle Rittenhouse who shot and killed two protestors and wounded another at a racial protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin was released on $2 million bail that people fundraised for. Now 18 years old, he is on tape drinking at a bar and posing with white supremist symbols.

So at the end of 2020, we saw that one reformed man, despite the guilty consciences of the jurors that convicted him, was rushed to the death sentence for the crime of destroying the evidence of a murder he did not commit at age 18. On the otherhand, another 18 year old boy that shot and killed two people is supported with enough money to run 100 schools in Haiti for a year, or do a ton of other important things, so that he be free, at least for awhile. You call that punishing what is bad and praising what is good?

Perhaps it wasn't Donald Trump who got Rittenhouse out on bail, but his stance on this subject is no secret. In fact, I first learned about the hand guesture that represents white supremacy when I read about a man Trump pardoned, who was, like Rittenhouse, pictured celebrating with friends, posing with that hand guesture right after being pardoned.

Around May 2020, I read an article about one of the men Trump pardoned who was in prison for committing war crimes. The article shared interviews of the officers under his lead, reporting that he ordered them to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan and then celebrated, saying how awesome it was. They had done the right thing, turned him in, testified against him at trial, and now he was released, despite them doing what they knew was right and having him convicted via a fair trial. This article claims that this was a pattern Trump engaged in, using his power to pardon war crimes, and it caused controversy.

This is what I am seeing. To me, it does not look like Donald Trump was a God appointed leader by those standards stated in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2. Using these examples, it looks like he does not honor the claim that everyone is made in God's image and used his power to pardon people who are members of his gang only, regardless of their crime, while displaying a desire to judge and show no mercy for those he did not relate to. I wonder what the Christian leader who first shared these thoughts sees and how, when held up to the Word, we can come to see eye to eye.