On Twitter the day after the shootings, Democratic Rep. After the shootings, he became an instant political lightning rod, with figures on both the right and left rushing to hold up the teenager as a symbol of their divergent worldviews. The first two nights of protests in Kenosha had devolved into looting and property damage, drawing national media attention to the small Wisconsin city on Lake Michigan well before Rittenhouse showed up with his AR-15. The police shooting of Blake and the unrest that followed took place at the tail end of a tumultuous summer filled with nationwide protests against racial injustice and, in particular, police killings of unarmed Black people, which had been sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. 25, 2020, as he walks along Sheridan Road in Kenosha, Wis., during a night of unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
I defended myself," he said during his own lengthy and, at times, emotional testimony last week. Rittenhouse, now 18, pleaded not guilty to all the charges, arguing that he acted in self-defense by opening fire on demonstrators who, he claimed, were trying to attack him. He was also charged with one misdemeanor count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18, but Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder agreed to drop the weapons charge when defense attorneys argued that the teenager could be cleared under a hunting exemption to Wisconsin law, which does not permit the sale of a firearm to anyone under the age of 18.Īmong the witnesses called by prosecutors was Rittenhouse’s friend Dominick Black, who said he purchased the gun used in the shootings. He was charged with five felony counts stemming from the shootings, including first-degree intentional homicide, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Rittenhouse was 17 when he carried an AR-style semiautomatic rifle on the streets of Kenosha during a turbulent protest in the summer of 2020 and opened fire on demonstrators, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and seriously wounding Gaige Grosskreutz. Let’s hope the jury’s decision was based exclusively on the evidence introduced during the the trial.Kyle Rittenhouse is comforted by his lawyer as he was acquitted of all charges at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Friday. Only the jurors know why they had reasonable doubt about Rittenhouse’s guilt. This latter view paints the shooting victims as heroes who were chasing down and trying to disarm an active shooter after Rittenhouse fired his assault-style rifle at the first victim.
Though Rittenhouse’s victims were white, there are others who label him a young racist with an itchy trigger finger who opened fire without cause on people protesting police abuse. Some people hail Rittenhouse as a vigilante hero of sorts, a free-agent crime fighter determined to protect property and promote order in a city taken over by lawless rioters. The jury’s resolution of the charges may also have been complicated by the wildly divergent views of the case: based not on facts but on the politics or ideology of the person following the case. This was inarguably inappropriate judicial conduct.
Or maybe the acquittals had something to do with Schroeder on Veterans Day inviting everyone in the courtroom to join him in a round of applause recognizing the military service of a defense witness about to testify.
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