‘Bad Facts’: MSNBC Analyst Says Rittenhouse Jury Verdict Unsurprising But It May Send ‘Wrong Message’

Although the facts virtually required that the jury acquit Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges, the “not guilty” verdict may send “the wrong message” to the world, an MSNBC legal analyst said shortly after the decision on Friday.

The prosecution’s case was hampered by “bad facts,” said MSNBC legal expert Julius Kim, shortly after the 18-year-old’s full acquittal.

“This was a tough case for the state to make, because we had what we call ‘bad facts’ in terms of the state’s case,” Kim said. “Kyle Rittenhouse was attacked; he was chased, and he was also approached by someone who had a handgun in his hands.”

“There were a lot of witness problems for the state in this case,” Kim added, noting that the prosecution’s witnesses also strengthened Rittenhouse’s case that he acted in self-defense in some instances. Even at its strongest, “there was a lot of gray” in the prosecutors’ case, he said. “I think all of us who can see, we aren’t terribly surprised by the verdicts that we now have in front of us. But I am concerned that the wrong message has been sent to other people in the community.”

Moments earlier, MSNBC reporter Shaquille Brewster framed the issue by noting that a local left-wing protester and Unitarian Universalist minister named Monica Cummings had expressed “frustration” and “fear of what message” the jury’s unanimous verdict of not guilty sends to other people.

Cummings expressed disbelief that anyone would have been armed during the arson-fueled conflagration that engulfed Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August 25, which caused more than $50 million in damage to the city.

“Why would you have a military-style weapon at a peaceful protest?” Cummings asked of the riot, which CNN famously described as “fiery but mostly peaceful.”

Cummings said she worried about “armed men with military-style weapons showing up and now knowing that all they have to do is say, ‘Hey, I felt fear’ or ‘I felt my life was in danger,’ and they can shoot people.”

Cummings added that right-wing protesters may want to shoot journalists. “I’m going to tell the media, you know, you could be in the crosshairs as well, with all the rhetoric about media being the enemy of the state and so forth and so on.”

“Your microphone could be mistaken for a weapon,” she told Brewster.

Cummings said Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal fits America’s “history of vigilante justice in this country, all the way back to times of enslavement, when people would be deputized to go out and track down enslaved persons who ran away, to lynching