Will Frightened Jurors Cave to the Pressure?

 

The jury at Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial deliberated for a third full day without reaching a verdict Thursday, while the judge banned MethNBC from the courthouse after a freelancer for the network was accused of following the jurors in their bus. The jury members will return on Friday morning to resume their work. Unlike previous days, they had no questions and no requests to review any evidence in the politically and racially fraught case.  In case you haven't heard, Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for defending himself and 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 defense 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.

 

Also Thursday, Circuit Judge Bruce 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 4 p.m. 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-defense. 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.

 

 

Rittenhouse is 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-defense after coming under attack, while prosecutors argued he instigated the bloodshed.

 

 

The case has exposed deep divides among Americans over guns, so called "racial injustice", vigilantism and self-defense in the U.S. To some civil rights activists race baiters, the shootings were an attack on the movement for racial justice, that is an excuse to riot, burn, and loot, and some have complained of a racial double standard in the way Rittenhouse was treated by law enforcement that night.

 

The defense 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.  BLM/Antifa terrorists have made their presence known throughout the trial as a means to intimidate the jury, and have vowed to burn down the city if Rittenhouse is aquitted. 

 

Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.

 

 *** UPDATE ***  Acquitted on all charges ... let the "peaceful demonstrations" rioting and looting begin ... free flat screens and Nikes for all (BLM/Antifa terrorists)!~  May one of Rittenhouse's "victims", convicted child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum rot continue rotting in hell.