Vigilante Justice in Kenosha?

“Vigilante justice”-- who knew? So says famed emeritus Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz. (via Maggie's Farm.)

Speaking about the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse Dershowitz declared that the prosecution had not made its case and that the defendant should be acquitted.

And then he added this:

Rittenhouse, if acquitted, should then “bring lawsuits” against corporate news outlets for articles claiming the teen engaged in “vigilante justice,” Dershowitz said.

“It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” he said.

Several years ago, then-Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann filed defamation suits against CNN, The Washington Post, and other outlets following accusations of racism against him after a viral video showed an encounter with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. Sandmann ended up reaching a settlement with CNN and The Washington Post last year.

“The idea is to make the media accountable for deliberate and willful lies,” said Dershowitz, referring to Sandmann’s case.

It seems fair enough. Instead of declaiming against the corporate media, as many of us like to do, why not make them answer in court. Sue CNN; Sue the NY Times; Sue The New Yorker. And, while we are at it, why not sue Joe Biden for claiming that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.

Then, Dershowitz offers a sad coda to the episode:

Now, left-leaning media outlets “want an outcome” in the trial, Dershowitz said.

“They want a result and if they don’t get their results, and you know this seeps through to the jury. I worry that the jury could be influenced by the fear that if they vote to acquit, they’ll be called racist and they’ll be attacked.”

The term for this is jury tampering. If the threat of civil insurrection hangs over the trial, if the jurors have been identified and threatened, how can Kyle Rittenhouse really receive a fair trial?

It's certainly interesting to see a lifelong civil libertarian and liberal Democrat denounce the current cultural environment in the name of civil liberties and liberal values. It shows how bad things really are.