KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors and defense attorneys for Kyle Rittenhouse will return to the courthouse without the jury present on Friday to finalize how jurors will be instructed when they get the case next week.
Jurors will soon begin deliberating in a case that left Americans divided over whether Rittenhouse was a patriot taking a stand against lawlessness or a vigilante.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers rested their case Thursday, putting on about 2 1/2 days of testimony to the prosecution’s five, with the most riveting moment coming when the 18-year-old told the jury that he was defending himself from attack when he used his rifle to kill two men and wound a third on the streets of Kenosha in the summer of 2020.
Prosecutors have sought to portray Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, which took place during a tumultuous night of protests against racial injustice.
He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.
Jury instructions will be worked out on Friday, and closing arguments are expected on Monday. After closing arguments, names will be drawn to decide which 12 jurors will deliberate and which ones will be dismissed as alternates. Eighteen people have been hearing the case. The panel appeared overwhelmingly white.
The protests in Kenosha were set off by the wounding of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer. Rittenhouse, then 17, went to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Illinois, with a rifle and a medical kit in what the former police and fire youth cadet said was an effort to protect property after rioters set fires and ransacked businesses on previous nights.
Rittenhouse fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, in an initial confrontation and just moments later fatally shot Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot.
The case has stirred fierce debate over vigilantism, self-defense, the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other police violence against Black people.
Rittenhouse is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, which is Wisconsin’s murder count; attempted first-degree intentional homicide; first-degree reckless homicide; reckless endangering; and illegal possession of a weapon by a person under 18.
Prosecutors said they will ask Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder to allow the jury to consider possible lesser charges on some of the counts — potentially the intentional homicide and attempted intentional homicide charges.
One of the final witnesses for the defense was a use-of-force expert, John Black, who testified that less than three seconds passed between the time somebody fired a bullet in the air and Rittenhouse opened fire on the first man he shot, Rosenbaum.
Black took the stand as part of an effort by Rittenhouse’s lawyers to show that he had reason to fear for his life and acted in self-defense.
Rittenhouse, in his own turn on the stand Wednesday, testified that he heard a gunshot directly behind him as he was being chased by Rosenbaum. Authorities said the shot was fired by someone else in the crowd.
The account Rittenhouse gave has largely been corroborated by a wealth of video and the prosecution’s own witnesses: Rittenhouse said that Rosenbaum cornered him and put his hand on the barrel of his rifle, the second man hit him with a skateboard and the third man came at him with a gun of his own.
At one point Wednesday, his lawyers angrily demanded the judge declare a mistrial and bar Rittenhouse from being retried — essentially asking that the whole case be thrown out. They accused the chief prosecutor of asking Rittenhouse out-of-bounds questions.
The judge lambasted the prosecutor but pressed on with the case.
Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin; Forliti from Minneapolis; Associated Press writers Tammy Webber from Fenton, Michigan; Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; and Kathleen Foody in Chicago contributed.
Find AP’s full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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And to accompany those instructions, let’s hope they have intelligence and good common sense.
AND PROTECTION from the mobs of blm and antifa thugs, who you KNOW ARE itching at the chance to intimidate the jurors into ruling “HOW THEY WANT!”
Talk about having intelligence and good common sense, After joe called Rittenhouse a White Supremist, Joe was heard to tell Kamala that he thinks he got the name Rittenhouse because he was caught writing graffiti that night during the riots spray painting anti-Biden slogans on Kenosha Houses.
The next instruction step is for the MSM to “Instruct” THE PEOPLE that the judge is a racist. When your case is weak and your prosecutor drops the ball, just accuse and attack the Judge for being racist. Is that all you anarchists and traitorous media can come up with? Racism, the last refuge of a political scoundrel. Rittenhouse clearly was defending himself, just as he was defending his community against anarchy. If he gets convicted of a crime he did not commit, then all of East Texas should march on Washington and remove and return the body of Audie Murphy from the D.C. ground no longer fit to hold American patriots, or socially unindoctrinated young men who when socialist evil and oppression arise, know what to do and act on their consciences, ,,,,The very vehicle God uses to speak his truths to men and women which Democrats these days have to silence, in order to not get found out and be able to live with their self-chosen corruption. One bad man’s vigilantism is another’s good patriotic response.
Not guilty.
If there is any justice you will be proven right.
WE all hope and pray that’s the outcome.