David Shestokas Rittenhouse Trial Opening Statements Defense Outstanding Prosecution whines 110321

Welcome to Chosen Generation with your host, Pastor Greg Young. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people that you should shoe forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light which in time past were not a people but are now the people of God which had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

And now, Chosen Generation, where no topic is off limits and everything is filtered through biblical glasses. And now, here's your host, Pastor Greg. And welcome to the program. Great to have you with me. Thanks so much for tuning in. I know you have a choice on where you can listen each and every day and I thank you for keeping it tuned here to Chosen Generation Radio. Well, folks, hour number two.

Hour number two. If you missed any of our first hour, I really do want to encourage you to be sure and check it out. You can hear Michael Morris and I, we talked about a great deal about media and what's going on with media. And the last segment was with Derek Hawley and talking about the NAACP and how they seem to want to kill black babies and sterilize black women.

That makes absolutely no sense to Derek and I but that's what's going on with the left. So anyway, wanted to bring that to your attention. You can find out more about it at chosengenerationradio.com. He's a part of Project 21 Black Leadership Network and also is the host of his own program, Reaching America.

Reaching America. Well, hey, I'm really excited to have my next guest join me and I want to give you a heads up. Bottom of the hour, you don't want to miss this, bottom of the hour. The Chief's Chief joins us. Mark Meadows will be with us. Bottom of the hour, Mark Meadows, Chief's Chief is a new book but we'll get on with Mark and we've got a short hit or a quick hit, about a 12 to 14 minute hit with him at the bottom of this hour.

So you don't want to miss a minute of that. Joining me now though, our constitutional attorney and expert and it's my sincere pleasure to welcome to the program, my good friend, David Chistokas. David, welcome. Good to have you. David Chistokas Good morning, Greg, on this Grand Virginia morning.

That's for another day though, because I know we've agreed that we're going to discuss the situation in Wisconsin at the moment regarding Mr. Rittenhouse. Yes, but we will again say congratulations to Glenn Youngkin and congratulations also to Winsome Sears, the governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, elect of the great state of Virginia and I do believe that it's going to be a great state again. I used to love going to Virginia, I used to love visiting Richmond, going down on the waterfront and partaking in some of the best food in the world, seriously. Some of the best food in the world and I've eaten all over the place and I'm telling you Richmond, Virginia has some great restaurants there and the beautiful Jefferson Hotel, which is a landmark and which is an incredible place to stay as well.

Always loved, they just always treated me so well there in Richmond, Virginia, so love that place. All right, let's talk- Before you leave on the personal note, happy congratulations and I'm escaping his name at the moment, but to the first Cuban-American attorney general of Virginia, the attorney general's office in Virginia also was read last night and the attorney general-elect I'm going to have to get to know because certainly hopefully next November they'll say the first Lithuanian-American attorney general of Illinois. So we'll- Mayaris. No, no, no. Is it? Yeah, Mayaris, right? Is the- Yeah, that's right.

Yes. Mayaris is the gentleman that is ahead in the Virginia attorney race. 1,662,000 to 1,624,000, 38,000 is how much he is ahead right now. I don't know. He's 78% in, so yeah, that is really incredible.

Let me see. Acomac says, okay, yeah, okay, so they give different county results. But nonetheless, yes, good news with regards to that. Winsome Sears won by 58,000 votes and Youngkin won by 72,000 votes. I guess they haven't quite called the attorney general's race yet, although it's 50.6 to 49.4. I'm looking at CNN's politics.

Maybe it's called somewhere else. But good news. Okay, let's move on to Rittenhouse. Let's talk about Kyle Rittenhouse and this trial that has begun. A lot of, well, some good testimony in the first day, it sounds like, but give me your thoughts.

Well, I was watching it in the background while I was doing all the work, so I caught quite a bit of yesterday's activities. And actually, while the testimony of the two witnesses they called was somewhat interesting, the more interesting aspect, I believe, is how the divergence between the opening statements of the state related to the defense. And the defense just did a masterful job of utilizing all the tools available of modern society and technology because there's so much video of the event from different directions and actually including overhead FBI video that included heat sensors of all the people roaming around on the streets. It was just a masterful presentation by the defense and the state, basically, and just kind of talked about their position on the matter and it was really kind of dead and flat and it became clear, we'll talk about a couple of legal concepts that went together in what happened relative to the defense's presentation. The defense's presentation clearly went for what they describe as the all-out perfect self-defense defense. There's something called imperfect self-defense, which leaves some things open for the jury. The perfect self-defense is that, in Kyle's mind, the fact is that he, in fact, had his life in danger and he responded appropriately. And the thing that makes it perfect is that that's his subjective situation but it's also judged in an objective manner, that is, was it reasonable for Kyle to believe that. And their presentation went, basically, it was, in fact, reasonable for Kyle to believe that. There's a different concept called the imperfect self-defense and that is where the defendant may have believed that but his belief was unreasonable from an objective standpoint. And that can reduce something, say, from murder to manslaughter but that doesn't set you free if you have what would be called an imperfect self-defense. It's understandable that the defendant had a belief but his belief was unreasonable in the minds of the general, regular person out on the street and that gives the jury some leeway to do some things but the way they went, they're looking for a complete not guilty on this matter. But there's also something that was interesting that happened. Being that in addition to the murder charges and the charge regarding the aggravated battery regarding the individual that was shot but not killed, there's an additional charge of – Raplessness, right?

No. What I was going to talk about was the fact that they charged him with illegally possessing the weapon because, of course, he's underage and that was illegally possessed. There's a strategic matter here because Mr. Rittenhouse is charged with that crime and that crime, in fact, is a done deal. He's guilty on that, you know, that he should not have had the weapon because he was underage relative to Wisconsin law. And in many circumstances, strategically, the lawyers would, in fact, go ahead and plead guilty to that case so that it's off the table and it's not even an issue and it doesn't even arise in the course of the trial and it doesn't even get discussed. They chose not to enter such a thing, even though it's quite clear that that's a slam dunk that he's guilty. And it appears as though that they went for all out on the complete self-defense matter and then left that other charge in play, although he has absolutely no defenses to that charge, which would give the jury the opportunity to find him not guilty on the major, most dangerous charges and yet find him guilty on this other charge, in which case when the jury comes back in, if, in fact, they find him not guilty on the murder charges and aggravated battery charge, they still will be in a position to say, on this other matter, guilty. So they've given the jury this option of coming back with some sort of guilty finding.

And strangely enough, there's a number of reasons to do that and to allow them that option so that they can also give something to the community. And so there's a lot of interesting things going on there in the Rittenhouse matter. Interesting.

Okay. Yeah, because I had read at one point in time that in Wisconsin, a person under the age of 18 could potentially, that the problem was they assumed that he had crossed state lines with the weapon, which in fact wasn't the case. And I think that was the reason that Black was brought forward to give testimony because he testified that no, he was the one that actually allowed Kyle Rittenhouse to borrow his weapon. Well, that testimony is kind of interesting, too, because Black testified, Kyle's friend testified through the history of where the history of the weapon is, where the weapon came from. But on the day of the event, he testified that in fact Rittenhouse came to Black's home, took the weapon, took the weapon without permission. And so strangely enough, Black has covered himself for his own charges of providing the weapon to Rittenhouse. That whole scenario was kind of interesting because Black has pending charges, but his case is not set for 12 until January. But the interesting thing during the course of his testimony is he testified in a way that protected himself because he essentially said Rittenhouse took the weapon out of the home without permission.

And so to that extent, that kind of gets Black off the hook from the charges that he's on. But yet, as you say, indicates that the weapon did not come from Illinois, but rather had remained there. It had always been in Wisconsin. And that actually kind of gets, strangely enough, a federal issue out of the way because the crossing of the state lines would raise some potential federal liability. Whether the weapon was originally in Illinois or Wisconsin has no bearing on the Wisconsin law in terms of the possession. But it does actually go more towards Rittenhouse's defense in terms of the fact that he did not travel from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin with the weapon.

And that goes more towards his lack of intent to being involved in gunplay, if you will. So it's all, it was a good day for Rittenhouse, all in all. Yeah, a lot of interesting twists and turns that seem to have come up. I was looking at legalinsurrection.com has a blow-by-blow with video that you can watch so you can not only listen to their commentary, but then you can watch the video to make your own decision. One of the things that was interesting that we'll get into when we get back was the defense's opening statement.

You alluded to it, but I think it's important to note because of all of the 40 different items that they actually presented and basically the prosecution whined about it. Back with more. Hi, this is Michael, creator of Michael's MNP supplements. Let's talk energy. Do you wake up tired even after a full night's sleep? Does keeping up with your family and or your job leave you exhausted by noon? Do you find yourself turning way too early in the day and too often to caffeine-loaded drinks just to get you through it all? Why not turn to Michael's MNP's energy factors instead? Our energy factors are safe, healthy, and a natural way to keep your body energized and without that caffeine crash that you get from those laden drinks. Visit us today at michaelshealth.com. This is Pastor Greg and I use energy factors.

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We're here by sponsorship and by your support, and we're here for you to bring you truth. David Shostakis, our constitutional attorney. You can find David at the website under the CG contributors at chosengenerationradio.com. That's chosengenerationradio.com, and you'll find David Shostakis. Click on his picture, constitutional sound bites, as well as his book on the Declaration of Independence. We want you to pick up both of those and find out more about our guest, David Shostakis, at his website.

David, we were talking about Rittenhouse. One of the things that struck me as well was the job the defense did in the opening statement. And having been a jurist and a jury foreman in times past, and of course you're a prosecutory attorney veteran, talk to me about how important you believe those opening statements are relative to the impact on a jury. I suspect often, of course it's very difficult to get in the mind of the jurors afterwards. And usually when we have done jury trial, when you do jury trials, the judge always asks if the jurors will speak with the attorneys afterwards. And so frequently I've been part and parcel of discussions with juries after the cases. And you know what, you learn the most from the jurors in the cases that you lost. And I would suggest that, but one of the things you learn is, yes, the opening statements do in fact not only set the tone, but quite regularly set things in the minds of the jurors and can decide the case before they hear the rest of the evidence. And yesterday the state chose to just kind of go through a narrative that they spoke of in terms of what they thought happened.

The defense on the other hand essentially went through the entire case and presented most of the video and picture evidence that was available, of which there was much. And so they told the whole, essentially they told the whole case, which follows a general rule, tell people what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. I'm chuckling because I literally was starting to write that down on my notepad here as my thought. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Yeah, no, I mean, if you're going to give a good speech, right?

Dale Carnegie, you know, the speech course, right? If you're going to give a good speech and know your subject, don't talk about something you don't know. Don't talk about things that you really are kind of guessing about.

Know your topic, own your topic, and then tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. And it sounds to me like the defense basically has already told them, this is the case. This is what we're going to tell you. And now they're going to tell them what they told them and they're going to show it to them and further imprint it, and the prosecution is crying. It's not fair, Your Honor, because we did such a bad job.

Yeah, it's very unfortunate. And I can't stand that prosecutor's rooster haircut thing that he's got going on. It's so distracting and it would be extraordinarily distracting to the jury.

And it's amazing what people comment about from time to time. During the course of a particular trial, I actually, before I had LASIK surgery, I actually wore glasses and I had some glasses that unfortunately, an arm broke during the course of the trial. When I talked to the jurors afterwards, everybody was asking me what happened to my glasses. It's what we know. We don't know what you said.

We just want to know how come you got those funny glasses on, Mr. Shostokis? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's something that stuck in my mind, you know, so I've always, you actually don't want to make yourself the issue. Right.

But jurors look at a lot of things. I've got, Mark Meadows is calling in. Folks, we're going to take a break. Check with more Chun Generation Radio coming up right after this.