Fresh off his rousing success (or not) suing CNN and the Washington Post for grievously defaming Nicholas Sandmann, attorney Lin Wood has picked up (along with Pierce Bainbridge) another fine young man as a client: Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager charged Thursday with homicide, reckless endangerment, and possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 after shooting three people at protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
Yesterday Wood released a bizarre statement describing Rittenhouse in absurdly glowing terms — he’s a lifeguard! a medic! civic minded and full of good will for his fellow man when he’s not blowing giant bullet holes into them! — and also previewing a bevy of strange defenses.
“Kyle did nothing wrong,” Wood wrote. “He exercised his God-given, Constitutional, common law and statutory law right to self-defense.”
As NBC’s legal analyst, Danny Cevallos notes, the reference to “Constitutional” rights strongly implies that Wood intends to assert a Second Amendment defense to the charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18. The Supreme Court has held that the right to bear arms is not absolute, and federal courts have affirmed the legality of prohibiting gun sales to persons under the age of 21, much less 18.
So arguing that Wisconsin’s arrest of a 17-year-old for wandering the streets with a loaded AR-15 strapped to his body violates the Constitution, much less God’s law, is probably a stretch. And speaking of stretching, it’s not entirely clear how a kid crossing state lines to deputize himself as a law enforcement officer, police the streets after curfew holding a gun he barely knows how to use (according to the charging documents), and then fire lethal rounds into an unarmed man qualifies him as a member of the “well regulated militia” for the purpose of the Second Amendment.
Mr. Wood will no doubt explain that after he gets through patting himself on the back for securing a 25-day continuance on his client’s extradition hearing to the dreaded third-world nation of … Wisconsin.
Kyle now has the best legal representation in the country. With help from Nicholas Sandmann attorney L. Lin Wood, Pierce Bainbridge and multiple top-tier criminal defense lawyers in Wisconsin immediately offered representation to Kyle.
Today, his legal team was successful in working with the public defender to obtain a several-week continuance of his extradition hearing to September 25th. This at least partially slows down the rush to judgment by a government and media that is determined to assassinate his character and destroy his life.
Twenty-five whole days! Wisconsin! Second Amendment! And lest we forget, God himself.
Was Kyle Rittenhouse’s possession of a gun protected by the Second Amendment? [NBC]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.