Kyle Rittenhouse shoots two people during a Black Live Matters demo and is acquitted. The case is clear to the jury and the court.
Kenosha – Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man. The 18-year-old, who shot two people the previous year, was acquitted on all counts by the 12-person jury. More than 30 witnesses were heard in the case, which was followed with great interest worldwide, and the jury then took 25 hours to come to their verdict. A judgment that raises questions.
How can it be that a man who takes a rifle to a Black Lives-Matter demo at the age of 17 and kills people there is acquitted? And how can it be that he is granted self-defense, although his arming only led to the fateful events of August 25, 2020?
The US media company CNN relies on legal experts who have extensively analyzed the Rittenhouse case to answer this question. The lawyers cite the accused’s testimony as the most important point. He had given the record in court that he had acted in self-defense. He shot Joseph Rosenbaum because he had previously threatened him, followed him and tried to take the rifle from him. In the course of his testimony, the 18-year-old burst into tears.
Kyle Rittenhouse in court: Defense practiced with “shadow juries”
“If Mr. Rosenbaum had taken my gun away from me, he would have used it, killed me with it and probably shot more people,” said Rittenhouse. The other men he shot in Kenosha were part of a “mob”. Including Anthony Huber, the second man to be killed by Kyle Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse’s testimony in court followed a prepared strategy of his defense. Following the acquittal, his attorney, Mark Richards, revealed to reporters that he had put together two “shadow juries” and played through the process in advance of the trial. He had Rittenhouse testify to one of these juries, but not to the other. The result was significantly better in the first case, so it was decided that the accused would also testify in the real trial and not have his right to remain silent.
CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson sees this as a crucial building block for the final acquittal: “That made him human. More importantly, he was able to explain his use of force himself. ”This is how the lawyer Elie Honig sees it. The former federal attorney emphasized to CNN that Rittenhouse had given the jury the opportunity to better understand his motives with his testimony. While the public prosecutor’s office could not produce enough to incriminate Rittenhouse decisively, his words convinced the jury that he did not shoot until he was attacked.
Kyle Rittenhouse Trial: Victim or Provocateur?
According to civil rights attorney Charles F. Coleman Jr., the trial consisted of two competing narratives: one that Rittenhouse was a victim who was attacked and one from a vigilante who first provoked the violence: “The jury went along with it the story of Kyle Rittenhouse as a victim, as they valued his self-defense claims significantly higher than the provocations brought up by the prosecutor. “
Wisconsin law allows the use of lethal force only if it is “necessary to prevent impending death or serious injury”. Since Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys cited the need for self-defense, it was up to the prosecution to unequivocally refute that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
Criminal defense attorney Sara Azari told CNN that prosecutors had not been able to prove that the fatal shooting was “unreasonable” at each of these men. According to the available video material, the jury had no choice but to follow the arguments of the defense.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal: Testimony counted
For criminal defense lawyer Bob Bianchi, the testimony was also the cause of the outcome of the trial. These would have challenged many of the prosecution’s allegations and even the witnesses called by the prosecution themselves would have partially underpinned the defense’s self-defense narrative.
Even Gaige Grosskreutz, the third man who was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse, had testified that he aimed his gun at Rittenhouse first. Although he later added that this was not his intention, the jury probably stuck to the fact that this statement also supported the arguments of the defense. For the lawyer Bianchi, the matter is clear: “No real trial lawyer can be of the opinion that this was not an astonishingly clear case of self-defense.”
For their part, prosecutors tried to portray Kyle Rittenhouse as an “active shooter”. In his closing statement, Kenosha County’s Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said that Rittenhouse “behaved in a way that no sane person would”. He provoked the events and ruthlessly fired his weapon.
Kyle Rittenhouse: Jury was instructed to look at the case through the eyes of the accused
Jurist Honig contradicts this version: “The attempt to portray Rittenhouse as an active shooter did not succeed. The defense was able to use the video recordings to prove that Rittenhouse had walked through the streets without firing his weapon. He didn’t shoot indiscriminately, only at people who had attacked him before. “
The argument that Rittenhouse had already provoked by wielding the AR 15 firearm did not catch on either. This was due to the gun culture in the state of Wisconsin, lawyer Bianchi told CNN: “You must not forget that this is a jurisdiction in which carrying weapons is not uncommon.”
CNN legal expert Laura Coates thinks another point is crucial. The jury was asked to see the case from the eyes of the accused and not from those of a sensitized public. It was about the definition of “appropriate”: “It was about what Rittenhouse had appeared to be justified at the moment of the act and whether he could have believed that he was actually in an emergency.” (Mirko Schmid)
In a previous version, “illegal” armament was written at this point. In fact, Judge Bruce Schroeder dropped that charge. The passage has been revised accordingly.
