Why The Criminal Histories Of Kyle Rittenhouse's Victims Have No Relevance In His Trial
They are not the ones on trial.
YouTube While the jury determine a verdit in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse — the public court are still divided on what justice looks like in this case.
Rittenhouse killed 2 people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and injured another after bringing a gun to a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.
The politicization of the case has led to personal attacks on both Rittenhouse and the victims coming from both the right and the left.
Although the personal criminal history of victims who are not on trial shouldn’t matter during a murder trial, they have come up in several arguments to justify Rittenhouse’s actions that night in Wisconsin — claiming that they deserved it.
Here are the criminal histories of all three Kyle Rittenhouse victims.
The morals behind whether or not someone “deserves” to have their life taken away from them do not matter in a court of law — where laws are being enforced and upheld.
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Yet, many are preoccupied with the past of these victims.
Gaige Grosskreutz
The only surviving member of the three people shot by Rittenhouse, Gaige Grosskreutz, was there that night with a medical kit, tourniquets, and a pistol.
While Grosskreutz did have a concealed-carry license for the pistol, it had already been expired the night of the protests in Kenosha.
He was a certified EMT in 2017 when he didn’t renew the license but continued working as a medic and helped people that night.
According to criminal background checks done by the Department of Justice, Grosskreutz had been charged with minor offenses, including noise violations and disobeying police, but was never convicted of any felonies as some have been saying.
He was once a suspect of committing a felony burglary in 2012, but the charges were dropped.
He was convicted of a prior misdemeanor for intoxicated use of a firearm in 2015 where he received probation for the case.
Anthony Huber
Anthony Huber appeared at his second protest with his skateboard and his cell phone when he chased Rittenhouse down the street, hit him with his skateboard, tried to wrestle the gun away, and was ultimately killed.
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Huber has two domestic abuse convictions that involve his siblings. In 2012, Huber took a plea deal after being charged with strangulation and suffocation, and false imprisonment — all felonies.
In 2017, Huber was incarcerated for violating the terms of his probation and went back into prison again a year later after kicking his sister and being charged with disorderly conduct.
Joseph Rosenbaum
Joseph Rosenbaum has a long and troubled past with a felony conviction for sexually abusing minors.
On the night of the protest, Rosenbaum had just been released from the hospital where he was placed following his second suicide attempt in as many months.
Wanting to change his life around, he tried going to the pharmacy to get medication for his bipolar disorder when the pharmacy was closed early because of the unrest.
When Rosenbaum was growing up, he had been molested practically every day by his stepfather, according to an interview received by Snopes.
This led to his troubled adulthood where he was kicked out of his mother’s home and moved into a home with five boys — all aged 9 through 11 — and their parents, where he sexually abused them for weeks when he was 19.
After spending the better part of 14 years in prison and registering as a sex offender, he fathered a child with a woman he met after he was discharged.
One day, she confronted Rosenbaum about pornography she found on his phone, prompting him to body-slam her and was sent to jail.
Upon being released, he called a suicide crisis hotline and was sent to the hospital before being sent to jail again for violating a no-contact order from his previous girlfriend.
These criminal pasts do not matter in Rittenhouse's trial.
The right uses Rosenbaum against the left by saying that they support pedophilia and sex offenders because they show sympathy for the lives taken by Rittenhouse.
Not only that, but they use the criminal backgrounds of all of the victims to try and justify that they might have deserved what they were getting instead of the actual laws behind the murders.
It should be noted that Rittenhouse was not aware of the pasts of these men when he shot them.
Equally, they are not the ones on trial here.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.