After Rittenhouse verdict, experts weigh in on CT’s self-defense laws

The self-defense laws in Wisconsin, put in a spotlight when a jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of murder after fatally shooting protesters during a night of civil unrest, are largely similar to self-defense laws in Connecticut, legal experts said Monday.

Those laws, which are now facing scrutiny amid a national debate over vigilantism and gun violence, are not uncommon in American legal codes, experts said, though minor variations that occur state-by-state can lead to different legal outcomes.

In Connecticut, for example, a law that has existed for decades says that a person is not justified in using deadly force if they have an opportunity to retreat to safety unless they are in their home or workplace.

While such a “duty to retreat,’ is not written into the law in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that jurors in the Rittenhouse case could consider whether or not the defendant had the opportunity to back away from an encounter when determining guilt.

Neither Connecticut nor Wisconsin are among the dozens of states that have enacted so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, which generally allow a person to use deadly physical force without retreating in any place where they are lawfully present.

Mike Lawlor, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and a former prosecutor and lawmaker, said that while Connecticut and Wisconsin do not have particularly lenient standards for self defense, both states place the burden on prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant was not acting in self-defense.

“They’re definitely not radically different,” Lawlor said of the laws in the two states. “We’re kind of in the mainstream like that. There are some states like Texas, Florida that have these overthe-top castle doctrines that say if you feel like someone’s committing a crime you can just kill them.”

Rittenhouse was accused of fatally shooting two men and injuring a third with a military-style assault weapon while patrolling the streets of Kenosha during civil unrest in that city last year. One of the men killed, Joseph Rosenbaum, was unarmed, though Rittenhouse said he feared that Rosenbaum was attempting to disarm him amid a crowd of protesters.

The other two men, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz, pursued Rittenhouse following the first shooting. Huber was shot and killed after he swung and hit Rittenhouse with a skateboard, while Grosskreutz was shot in the arm while pointing a pistol at Rittenhouse.

Despite the fact that Rittenhouse had travelled from out-of-state and possessed a gun that he was not old enough to buy, attorneys said the laws in Connecticut and Wisconsin generally give defendants broad leeway to argue that the circumstances necessitated the use of deadly force — and for jurors to believe them.

“The issue with the selfdefense laws, almost all of it depends on how a jury judges reasonableness,” said Christine Perra Rapillo, the state’s chief public defender. “So in Connecticut, our law allows you to use reasonable force to combat imminent physical force, and you can use deadly force to combat deadly force.”

Even with similar laws, some attorneys argued that the facts of the Rittenhouse case would have likely produced a different outcome in Connecticut, given the population’s familiarity with strict gun control laws.

“Those same facts in Connecticut, I mean the Connecticut jury, I think, would be really saying ‘What the hell was this guy doing there with the gun?,” said Gerald Klein, a defense attorney in Hartford.

The state’s strict gun laws would also likely result in Rittenhouse being convicted of offenses for carrying an illegal assault weapon and large-capacity magazine, experts said. “In Connecticut, pretty much everything else that Rittenhouse did is a crime,” Lawlor said.

Yet despite having tougher rules and penalties on the possession of firearms, Lawlor said that Connecticut’s laws — like those in Wisconsin — make it relatively easy for someone to shoot and claim self defense. Cases like Rittenhouse’s and the trial of three white men in Georgia who claimed self-defense in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man, are likely to prompt officials to revisit those laws, he said.

“I don't think the jury made a mistake [in the Rittenhouse case], I think the policies are mistaken,” Lawlor said. “I think we should revisit these policies because I don’t think people thought stuff like this would ever happen but now it's happened.”