Rittenhouse doesn't have to prove he acted in self-defense

There is already significant concern that women who defend themselves from domestic violence attacks struggle to get juries and judges to believe their defensive-force claims

JWR  "No one disputes that Kyle Rittenhouse, now 18 years old, shot three men and killed two of them during turbulent protests in Kenosha, Wis., that broke out after the shooting of a Black man by White police officers.

"And it is well known that the central issue of his trial is whether Rittenhouse has a valid self-defense claim for the three shootings. Less familiar to the public, however, is that, by and large, the outcome of Rittenhouse's case will turn less on the specific murky facts concerning what exactly transpired on the night of Aug. 25 than on the seemingly technical but actually essential issue of the burden of proof: Does Rittenhouse have to prove he was acting in justifiable self-defense, or does the state have to disprove it?

"In Wisconsin, the state bears that burden: The prosecution must disprove at least one legal element of Rittenhouse's self-defense claim, and do so beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, to be clear, that doesn't mean that Rittenhouse could just pronounce "I did it in self-defense!" and sit down. Rittenhouse bore the "burden of production" - one of the components of burden of proof.

"That means he had to present facts which, if proved, could be found by a jury to constitute valid defensive force. But the Wisconsin state Supreme Court has made it clear that this burden is a fairly low (if meaningful) bar. The narrative that Rittenhouse laid out cleared it; it then fell to the prosecution to disprove at least some part of it. The prosecution may yet prevail in its attempt to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that self-defense was justified; that's now up to the jury. But many legal experts have described such an outcome as a long shot." . . .