Kyle Rittenhouse's Pal Gets Sweetheart Plea Deal

What we’ve learned about Wisconsin since 2020 is that up is down, right is left and justice, apparently, isn’t. How else to describe a place where a jury finds no criminal liability for Kyle Rittenhouse, the governor pardons folk who walk out of their houses pointing guns at people who are literally just walking by and a cazillionaire quarterback thinks people pointing out that he lied about being vaccinated amounts to persecution.

Wisconsin is a very cold and very weird place that keeps giving us news like this: Dominic Black, who bought Rittenhouse the AR-15 that Rittenhouse used to kill two people during a protest in 2020, has struck a plea deal that would allow him to pay a small fine and do no jail time. Oh and the kicker: he walks away with no criminal record.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On Friday, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger filed a proposed plea agreement. It suggested Black would plead no contest to a non-criminal citation, and pay a $2,000 fine, and the felony counts would be dismissed. The proposed deal was first reported by kenoshacountyeye.com.

Judge Schroeder could reject the deal, or still just dismiss the original felony counts based on his ruling about the minors-with-firearms law in the Rittenhouse case.

Schroeder, you’ll remember, is the judge who presided over Rittenhouse’s homicide trial as if the defendant was his son rather than a guy who killed two people with a gun he wasn’t even old enough to buy. In fact, Schroeder actually tossed out Rittenhouse’s related gun possession charge at his murder trial, siding with his defense that it wasn’t actually illegal for him to have the gun because of the length of its barrel.

In other words, it’s likely a done deal that Black’s plea bargain gets accepted, that is if Schroeder doesn’t just toss the charges altogether.