Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois armed teen who killed two people and injured another during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer, was on trial Monday on manslaughter in a case that will test the distinction between self-defense and self-defense killings.
A jury of 20 people was selected, including 11 women and nine men, according to a reporter from the pool in court. This number will be reduced to 12 when deliberations begin.
Rittenhouse is charged with five felonies: intentional first degree homicide, reckless first degree homicide, attempted first degree intentional homicide and two counts of reckless first degree security breach. He is also charged with the offense of possession of a dangerous weapon before the age of 18 and the non-criminal offense of failing to comply with an emergency order. He pleaded not guilty.
The trial is expected to last just over two weeks and will be televised, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said in court.
The case stems from Rittenhouse’s actions following protests related to the police shooting at Jacob Blake in August 2020, which left Blake paralyzed.
After a day of turmoil in Kenosha, Rittenhouse traveled to town from his home in Antioch, Illinois. On the night of August 25, armed with an AR-15 type rifle, he collided with people gathered near a car dealership and shot Rosenbaum, according to a criminal complaint.
Others at the scene sued Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, who then shot Huber and injured Grosskreutz, according to the complaint.
The teenager quickly became a polarizing figure in partisan pitched battles across the country during the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, which led to cases of violence in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Rittenhouse’s presence in Kenosha was also part of what experts warned of an increase in amateur armed paramilitary groups at protests across the country.
Prosecutors say Rittenhouse’s actions amounted to criminal homicide, but his lawyers say he shot the men in self-defense. Wisconsin law requires that when a self-defense claim is raised, prosecutors must rebut the self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt – a difficult hurdle.
“It’s a pretty big burden for the prosecution to do this and I think that will be the real challenge for them,” said John Gross, associate clinical professor and director of the Public Defender Project at the University of Wisconsin. . Madison Law School.
Those chosen to sit on the jury will be responsible for assessing the reasonableness of Rittenhouse’s actions that night.
“We want the jury to control state power and uphold community standards,” said Cecelia Klingele, associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So when the law requires that force be used in a reasonable way, we want our community to decide what is and is not reasonable.”
How was the night of August 25?
Rittenhouse, from nearby Antioch, had an affinity for firearms and supported “Blue Lives Matter” and then President Donald Trump, according to his social media accounts. In videos posted to a TikTok account, individuals can be seen practicing target practice and assembling a long rifle.
On August 23, 2020, a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, several times in the back. The shooting was filmed on a cell phone and quickly spread online, sparking outrage and protests as well as violence and destruction over the next few days.
Some people, including a number who did not live in Kenosha, took the security issue into their own hands. Rittenhouse was among them.
Dressed in a green T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, the armed Rittenhouse marched through the city streets on the night of August 25 with a group of gunmen, video and photos of the spectacle of the demonstrations. Hours after curfew, Rittenhouse was walking the streets near a car dealership holding what investigators later determined to be “a Smith & Wesson AR-15 .223 style rifle,” the criminal complaint against him says .
The complaint says Rittenhouse clashed with people gathered near the car dealership for unspecified reasons.
Rosenbaum was unarmed and threw something that appeared to be a plastic bag at him and missed it, according to the complaint. Rosenbaum and Rittenhouse walked through the parking lot and appeared to be nearby when a loud bang suddenly sounded and Rosenbaum fell to the ground, according to the complaint.
As Rosenbaum lay on the ground, Rittenhouse made a call on his cell phone and said, “I just killed someone” as he fled, according to the complaint. A reporter who was following the suspect and the victim at the time provided investigators with more details about what happened. He told investigators the shot man was trying to get the suspect’s gun, according to the complaint.
Another video shows the suspect fleeing the scene followed by people chasing him.
“A person can be heard shouting what sounds like, ‘Beat him! Another person can be heard screaming what sounds like, “Hey, he shot him! “”, Alleges the criminal complaint. In another video, a person shouts, “Catch him! Catch this guy!
Rittenhouse tripped and fell as people chased him, and while he was lying on the ground, a person identified as Huber approached him with a skateboard in his right hand, according to the complaint. Huber appeared to reach for Rittenhouse’s gun with one hand as the skateboard hit the teenager in the shoulder, the complaint states, and Rittenhouse then shot Huber.
Rittenhouse then pointed his gun at a third man, later identified as Grosskreutz, who was holding a handgun, the complaint says. He was shot in the right arm and left in the opposite direction shouting for a doctor as the accused walked away, according to the complaint.
Rittenhouse left the scene of the shooting still armed and walked towards officers with their hands in the air, but police walked past him without arresting him, video shows. He eventually returned home and went to his local police department the next morning.
Fixed: An earlier version of this story distorted the timeline of when Rittenhouse owned the gun. The Lake County State Attorney’s Office said there was no evidence he owned the gun in Illinois.
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CNN’s Paul P. Murphy, Brad Parks and Faith Karimi contributed to this report.
