The Right to Self-Defense Faces New Threats

There aren’t a lot of guarantees in the criminal justice system. But for a long time now, there’s been at least one thing you can be pretty sure of — if you kill someone else in self-defense, there’s a good chance you’re going to be charged with murder.

Trayvon Martin called George Zimmerman a cracker right before pounding his head into the pavement, and famously, the entire country — including the president of the United States — determined immediately that George Zimmerman was the bad guy. And of course, Kyle Rittenhouse very nearly had to spend the rest of his life in prison for the crime of defending himself against several people who tried to kill him, including a pedophile who just got out of a mental hospital and an Antifa footsoldier who drew a handgun on him.

Everyone’s heard of these cases because in both instances, there was a clear racial angle to push. Even though he didn’t kill any black people, the Kyle Rittenhouse incident happened in the context of BLM mobs torching cities. That’s why he became an instant target. George Zimmerman, for his part, gave Barack Obama a chance to talk about how systemically racist America is. So his case was useful for a moment as well.

But there are many self-defense cases that don’t make the mainstream news, at least not nearly to the same extent. And all of them, to one degree or another, contradict the prevailing media narrative, so the corporate press ignores them. But they’re important to talk about, in part because they show how prosecutors and witnesses are willing to lie to imprison people who exercise one of their most fundamental rights, which is the right of self-defense. And how casually they will destroy people’s lives for the crime of trying to preserve their own lives.

So I’m going to go in-depth into one of these cases, which is still ongoing and hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves. Plus, it’s the premiere day for “JUDGED,” so a deep-dive on a court case seemed fitting.

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Here’s the background.

In the summer of 2022, a man in his early 50’s named Nicolae Miu was out tubing with a group of people, including his wife, in the Apple River in Wisconsin. Apparently a member of his party dropped their phone somewhere in the river, and Nicolae Miu left his group and went looking for it. That’s when, around 3:40 p.m., Miu encountered a couple of additional tubing groups — one consisting of a bunch of teenagers, and the other including some adults.

Most of the involved parties are under the influence of alcohol and other drugs to varying degrees. They began exchanging some words. Here’s what happened next:

It’s clear from this footage that, throughout the entire incident right up until their friend gets stabbed, the crowd of teenagers doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, or fearful for their lives in any way. And that makes sense. Miu is much older than they are, and, though they wouldn’t have known this, he just had quadruple bypass surgery.

Meanwhile, these teenagers are mostly football players in prime physical condition. So they appear to be very much the aggressors as they jeer and taunt the older man and accuse him of “looking for a little girl.”

Then something happens off-camera. An adult woman, who came over from another tubing group, gets in the man’s face. He apparently makes some sort of contact with her, and the mob pounces. They push the man and begin hitting him repeatedly after he goes down in the water. Meanwhile the woman is fine — she’s not hurt in any way. Only after the man fatally stabs one of his attackers — a teenager named Isaac Schuman — does the mood change. Schuman bled out on the scene. The man also stabbed several others who were attacking him.

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Based on these facts, within 48 hours, the D.A. charged Nicolae Miu with first-degree murder. What’s followed, nearly two years later, is nothing short of a train wreck.

There are air-tight cases, close cases, and then there’s this. Pretty much every prosecution witness has demonstrated very clearly that they’re either lying or completely unsure of what happened two years ago. This is such a debacle that very real questions need to be asked about why this case was brought, and why these prosecutors still have jobs.

I’ll start with the incredible testimony of a witness named Larrion Davis, who recorded some of the footage of the incident. Under cross-examination (from one of Kyle Rittenhouse’s old lawyers, incidentally), Davis admits he lied to the police about why the group was upset with Miu. Watch:

It’s hard to believe this is a real interaction between two humans.

Lawyer: “You said you saw him taking pictures of the girls.”

Witness: “Yes, I said that.”

Lawyer: “Did you see it?”

Witness: “No, I said it.”

To be clear, we’re talking about falsely accusing a man of pedophilia, two years after the fact. And the only excuse he can come up with for lying is, “There was a lot going on.”

Keep in mind, this is a prosecution witness. This should be the end of the case right here. This is the clearest possible evidence that the people Miu confronted decided, long after the fact, to come up with a story to justify their aggression towards him. They have no credibility whatsoever.

You’ll remember in the video, someone shouted that Miu was “looking for a girl.” But on cross-examination, another witness, Jawahn Cockfield, admitted that the claim wasn’t based on any evidence whatsoever. Watch:

So they just called this man a “raper” who’s interested in little girls, as a way of scoping out the situation. That’s their way of gathering intel, apparently. And then, elsewhere in the testimony, Cockfield claims to be shocked that the man, in response, turned around and became upset.

None of this makes any sense. And as the trial went on, it continued to make no sense. For example, on cross-examination, it was revealed that the dead teenager’s best friend, Owen Peloquin, told police — on the day of the incident — that Miu was looking for a lost phone, not underage girls.

Listen to the defense attorney read Peloquin’s prior statement, and then watch as Peloquin tries to weasel out of the admission:

Now, two years later, Peloquin’s memory is suddenly better. And by that, he means his memory is worse. Now he doesn’t recall the guy ever saying anything about missing a phone. And he had no way of figuring out how to tell the police any of this, because he’s just 19-years-old. And 19-year-olds are apparently completely unable to use Google or cellphones or dial 911, evidently.

These are strange lapses in the prosecution’s case, to say the least. And it keeps going. Peloquin also testifies that he simply can’t remember the fact that one of his friends was shouting “For the culture” to egg on a fight. Watch:

Admittedly, I had to look this one up, because I’m not a teenager. If you go on Urban Dictionary, you’ll find that “for the culture” means,

When you do something you know you usually wouldn’t have done and are doing it purely for the hype factor of going against your usual judgment to instead try something new and different.

This is what one of the “witnesses” was shouting as the mob descended on this 52-year-old man.

This is the kind of fact that, if you’re trying to make Nicolae Miu out to be the aggressor, is kind of inconvenient. So Owen just pretends he doesn’t remember it happening. Problem solved, according to the prosecutors.

These kinds of inconsistencies are continuing to pile up as the trial goes along. But a few facts were definitively established. One is that, contrary to what some of these teenagers said, Miu never knocked a woman down at any point during this altercation. She was captured on the recording, standing upright and holding her phone.

Additionally, Miu never stabbed anyone until he was in the water, surrounded by a mob that was punching him in the face. So Nicolae Miu waited until his life was in danger before he used deadly force.

And once he began stabbing people, he didn’t indiscriminately start swinging. Instead, he only targeted the people who were targeting him — including Isaac Schuman, who put his hands on Miu’s neck. Watch:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the prosecution has not presented a single witness to bolster its claim that this was first-degree murder. Instead, every single witness rebutted their argument.

Here for example is another witness, A.J. Martin, who concedes that ganging up on a man in his 50s and beating him may, in fact, not deescalate an already-tense situation:

So far, we have the prosecution establishing the following facts: Most of its witnesses are liars. It was completely reasonable for this 50-year-old man to fear for his life. One of the teenagers had his hand on this man’s neck while the others pummeled him from behind. And that they all lied about him being a pedophile, two years after the fact.

This is not exactly the kind of case it takes Perry Mason to win. But somehow, once again, things got worse for the prosecution. Yet another witness claimed that the group was “afraid” of Nicolae Miu, but began to feel a little more secure as other adults began surrounding him as well. So he’s presenting this image of a deranged 50-year-old man who’s freaking him out. Then the defense attorney shows a photo of the witness looking extremely enthusiastic and not remotely afraid. Watch:

That’s not the face of someone who’s afraid for his life, and who’s grateful that other adults have appeared to deal with a threat. Everyone looking at this footage knows that. This is yet another prosecution witness who is lying, overtly, on the stand.

I could go on for another hour dissecting every other aspect of this case, and how totally disastrous it’s been for the prosecution, but you get the point.

In no sane country is this a first-degree murder case. And by the way, there is no “duty to retreat” in Wisconsin, but even if there were, there was no real chance for this man to get away once the mob descended on him. This is a completely unjustifiable prosecution no matter how you look at it.

It was brought for the same reason that most other self-defense claims are brought — to terrorize the rest of the population into submission. Remember how the Rittenhouse prosecutor said “everyone takes a beating now and then?” We’re pretty close to the prosecutors in this case saying the same thing. That’s more or less their argument at this point — that 52-year-old men should just accept their mob beatings, rather than defend themselves. But that is obviously outrageous.

In a sane society, if you harass and assault someone, whatever happens next — whatever violence erupts as a result of your choices — is your fault. If you don’t want to get shot or stabbed, don’t go around trying to bully random strangers just for fun.

The reason this case isn’t on every mainstream channel is that the mob happened to be white, for the most part. But this is every bit as serious and coordinated an attack on the right to self-defense as the Rittenhouse and Zimmerman trials were. The judge should dismiss the charges. The prosecutors should be disbarred, and new prosecutors should consider looking into perjury charges for some of these witnesses.

If none of that happens — and if somehow the jury convicts — then we can say with certainty that, just a couple years after the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the right of self-defense has been suspended in the state of Wisconsin. Everyone living there should either move, or prepare accordingly. And the rest of us should do everything we can to preserve our fundamental rights while we still have them.

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