Jeffrey Toobin Calls Rittenhouse Verdict ‘Defensible’: ‘This Was Always a Tough Case for the Prosecution’
Just hours after Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all accounts, CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said he finds the verdict “defensible.”
Rittenhouse fatally shot two people and wounded another amid civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. Armed with a rifle, he traveled from neighboring Illinois, he said, to help clean graffiti and protect private property. His attorneys argued he acted in self-defense.
Anderson Cooper asked Toobin if he was surprised by the verdict.
“Not really,” he replied. “This was always a tough case for the prosecution.”
He called the lionization of Rittenhouse by some “appalling,’ but added, “The actual verdict in this courtroom, based on this evidence, is a defensible one, I think.”
Cooper said that the prosecution’s argument appeared to rely on the notion that Rittenhouse should not have been present in the first place, but the jury seemed unconvinced.
“And there were problems with the prosecution theory,” said Toobin. “Think of the three people that he shot. [Joseph] Rosenbaum chased him. The other one attacked him with a skateboard. The third… pulled a gun on him. Those are potential grounds for self-defense. That is not a terrible self-defense case and that’s what the jury believed.”
Toobin also pointed out that the courts are not the places to litigate social policy.
“This is why I have always thought the criminal justice system is a lousy way of creating or even explaining social change,” he explained. “Because the mission of the criminal justice system is so narrow. The only issue in this case was, did Kyle Rittenhouse commit these specific crimes?
“They didn’t address the larger question – because it wasn’t the jury’s job – of what was he doing there in the first place? And should 17-year-olds or anyone be running to situations like this with guns and trying to enforce the law on their own? That is a horrible thing. That is — led to this tragedy. But that’s not what the jury was deciding and that’s the paradox of this case.”
Watch above via CNN.
