Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for killing two men and wounding a third during a night of protests. Photo / AP
Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for killing two men and wounding a third during a night of protests. Photo / AP
The jury at Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial was to return on Saturday for a fourth day of deliberations, after a quiet day behind closed doors that ended with one juror asking if she could take home the jury instructions.
Friday's session in the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin, the United States, was notable largely for Judge Bruce Schroeder banning MSNBC from the courthouse after a freelancer was accused of following the jurors in their bus.
Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for killing two men and wounding a third with a rifle during a turbulent night of protests that erupted in Kenosha in the summer of 2020 after a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by a white police officer.
Even as the jury weighed the evidence, two mistrial requests from the defence hung over the case, with the potential to upend the verdict if the panel were to convict Rittenhouse. One of those requests asks the judge to go even further and bar prosecutors from retrying him.
Schroeder banned MSNBC after police said they briefly detained a man who had followed the jury bus and may have tried to photograph jurors.
NBC News said in a statement that the man was a freelancer who received a citation for a traffic violation that took place near the jury vehicle, and he "never photographed or intended to photograph them."
Before the jurors retired around 4pm at what the judge said was their own request, one of them asked if she could take the jury instructions home, and the judge said yes but told her she couldn't talk to anyone about them. Before deliberations, Schroeder read the jury some 36 pages of instructions on the charges and the laws of self-defence.
After the jury departed, Rittenhouse attorney Mark Richards told the judge he feared that letting members take home instructions would lead to jurors looking things up in the dictionary or doing their own research.
Tom Grieve, a Milwaukee attorney and former prosecutor who's not involved in the case, called the move "definitely unusual in my experience".
"The natural issue is that it will precipitate armchair research and table discussion," he said.
Judge Bruce Schroeder talks about why he let the jury take home the jury instructions at the end of the day. Photo / AP
At the end of the day, jurors looked tired, but no more than they did at the end of their first day. No one seemed visibly upset. Two jurors spoke genially to each other as they walked out the door.
Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old former police youth cadet when he went to Kenosha in what he said was an effort to protect property after rioters set fires and ransacked businesses on previous nights.
He shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, now 28. Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot.
Rittenhouse said he acted in self-defence after coming under attack, while prosecutors argued he instigated the bloodshed.
The case has exposed deep divides among Americans over guns, racial injustice, vigilantism and self-defence in the US.
To some civil rights activists, the shootings were an attack on the movement for racial justice, and some have complained of a racial double standard in the way Rittenhouse was treated by law enforcement that night.
The defence has twice asked the judge to declare a mistrial, alleging that they were given an inferior copy of a potentially crucial video and that the prosecution asked improper questions of Rittenhouse during cross-examination.
Schroeder has said the mistrial bid will have to be addressed if there is a guilty verdict. If Rittenhouse is acquitted, the dispute won't matter. But if he is convicted and the judge then declares a mistrial, that would void the verdict.
