What is NPR's narrative?

Your entire 3rd paragraph has no relation to what crime Rosenbaum would be charged with. It only succeeds in painting Rosenbaum as a criminal or as a character analysis of a violent person which has no bearing towards a conviction in a court of law. It also has no bearing on Rittenhouse's self-defense claim given that he was almost certainly not aware of any of these details when he chose to shoot Rosenbaum. Stick to the relevant facts.

@ShmuelNewmark The third paragraph is: given that {Rosenbaum was a demonstrable nutcase} the JURY believed {Rittenhouse's and Balch's testimony that a direct death threat was made}. Otherwise, their testimony could be dis-believed as self-serving. So it has direct bearing. All Rittenhouse knew is that he was being chased by a man who had explicitly threatened to kill him.

@Eugene speaking of narrative: He addressed Europid people, and Europid people only at the gas station by the n-word — not like he should use it at all.

If we want to throw the book at Rosenbaum, when he touched Rittenhouse's gun he became a felon in possession of a gun, and being on the Car Source lot may have been trespassing. I think he also was noted to have started a fire or damaged vehicles. He might also be guilty of recklessly endangering Macguiness by causing Rittenhouse to shoot at him, and may be vicariously guilty of reckless endangerment from Zeminski firing a shot in the air because they were co-conspiring. I don't know if he was on parole but if he was his actions might be a parole violation.

In short, engaged in acts of mischief. In any case the dead are not prosecuted.

I must point out that there's no general "assault" statute in Wisconsin. There's battery, but that's not the same thing - that requires actual bodily harm.

Can we not describe someone with diagnosed mental illness (I assume, if he was “straight out of mental hospital”) as a “nut-case”? It’s a pejorative term that doesn’t do those who suffer from mental illness any favours.

@Darren I think it's clear that the term is used pejoratively rather than descriptively in this context. But the author clearly intends to editorialize the behavior described rather than the mentally-ill patients at large. How would you propose changing that passage of the answer without changing the author's intents? I am not trying to be snide with this comment, btw. Comments are a perfectly valid way to suggest edits.

@grovkin, Yes it is used pejoratively, that's my point. In the same way there are words that are totally unnacceptable to describe other societal groups - gays, blacks etc - this is one that should not be used. The answer writer shies away from using the actual "N word" in the same sentence, but deems it's OK to use "nut-case" in this way. There are plenty of ways to change the wording. "The jury believed he was disturbed enough..." is just one that springs easily to mind. "Psychotic" may be appropriate too.

@Darren "psychotic" is equally pejorative though. It's just less colloquial. It's pejorative nature, however, derives from the condition itself being something that most people would prefer not to suffer. I don't think it's akin to the "N word" at all though. The "N word" stigmatizes a perfectly natural and harmless variation in the human anatomy, while any term descriptive of a mental illness would be descriptive of a harmful variation in the human anatomy (a permanent illness).

@grovkin psychotic is a medical term. Nut-case is not. The rest of your comment shows exactly the ignorance surrounding mental illness, and that society treats it as a stigma is why people fail to get help and diagnosed, which leads to high suicide rates, especially in young men.

@grovkin by the same token, would you think it OK to describe someone as a “cripple” because they have a disability? I was going use “spastic”, but unless things have changed recently I’m aware that in the USA this is still a socially acceptable term, whereas it definitely isn’t in the UK.

@darren being on medication to treat a mental illness is also a purely descriptive language. Nevertheless, "off his meds" is used pejoratively to describe antisocial behavior. I am writing this under the assumption that both of our comments will be removed or moved to chat,because they clearly are too far off-topic. But I would still encourage you to keep them relevant to the question and not to make personal attacks such as "your comment shows ignorance." If you have a suggestion on how to describe anti-social behavior caused my mental illness, please, make it. Social commentary is off topic.

@grovkin there was nothing personal about what I said. I said “the ignorance”, meaning of society at large. You’re the one that turned this into a debate.

Yes, I agree nutcase is probably offensive and the use of it detracts from an otherwise good answer. It can be removed to improve the tone of this post.

@DM Interestingly enough, under Wisconsin's Code of Military Justice, Assault is defined and is a punishable offense (and in fact, in the WCMJ the definition and punishment for Assault sounds an awful lot like it really should be Battery.) See this

@NeilMeyer I would ask you the same thing as I asked the other user making a similar suggestion. If you want to suggest a change to the answer which would not change the author's intent, please, suggest it. Atm, the phrase is there to describe a jury becoming open to the possibility one type of anti-social behavior, rooted in mental illness, being indicative of other types of anti-social behaviors. Removing the phrase would make the jury seem more arbitrary and less causal. Can you suggest an alternative phrasing, but which would not make the jury look arbitrary in making its decisions?

Disturbed enough to make such a threat, easy fix. I don't think it should be edited in unless done by the poster. Comments exist to help improve posts. If the poster wants to use borderline offensive language then it is his post to make. He may just get less upvotes than what the post deserves.

@neilmeyer fair enough, this is a legal sub stack, will update it to "Disturbed enough to make such a threat" when I'm in front of a computer and not on my phone.

@IllusiveBrian sounds like your comment could be a good answer.

An interesting thing to consider is what if Rosenbaum had managed to take Rittenhouse's gun? Given his earlier behaviour, it is reasonable to think that there would be many more casualties than there actually were.

@DM could you link the definition of Battery under WI Law?

@Kai as a long time listener and doner to NPR I can say with absolute certainty that they have a narrative. It's a left-leaning narrative. Is it CNN left-leaning...no. Is it center...no. Is it Michael Knowles/Ben Shapiro/Dave Rubin/Candace Owens right leaning...definitely not. All you have to do is be on NPR text-message survey list to know they have a narrative...just look at the semi-weekly questions posed there.

@UncleIroh I'd say it's the white-collar public-sector left kind from experience. Any facts that might upset Mrs Johnson teaching 3rd grade tend to get glossed over. CBC in Canada is very similar.