Kyle Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre among gun-rights advocates, even though, according to his own defence, it was his carrying of a rifle that put him in danger in the first place
IN MOST AMERICAN trials, defendants rarely take the stand in their own defence. Legally, they can, but most lawyers advise their clients against it, in case they appear shady, or slip. In the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, an 18-year-old former police cadet who in August 2020 killed two people and wounded another during, a small city in Wisconsin, the defence lawyers seem to have decided that letting their client face cross-examination was a gamble worth taking.
That night Mr Rittenhouse became separated from the group he had joined and ended up shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, a troubled 36-year-old, four times, killing him. He then ran away and, having fallen over, shot two more people who chased after him, killing one, Anthony Huber, who had been hitting him with a skateboard, and injuring another, Gaige Grosskreutz, who had been approaching him with a gun in hand.
The prosecution has thus tried to build a case that Mr Rittenhouse was trigger happy in a situation he recklessly got himself into, shooting an unarmed man who was just 5’3”. Then, when he could have helped, or turned himself in, he instead called his friend and then ran away, and ended up shooting at people who were trying to stop and disarm him, not kill him. Thomas Binger, the prosecutor, pressed him on untruths told immediately afterwards, such as a claim that Mr Rosenbaum had been armed.
Since almost all of the evidence was on videotape—with many of the witnesses simply confirming the interpretation of things shown on screen—the jury mainly must judge Mr Rittenhouse’s state of mind, and what was happening in the space of a few seconds. That is why some decisions made by the judge, Bruce Schroeder, have been so controversial. For instance, he forbade the jury from being told about Mr Rittenhouse commenting several weeks earlier that he wanted to shoot shoplifters.
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