Kyle Rittenhouse jury ends second day of deliberations without a verdict
Kyle Rittenhouse’s jury ended its second day of deliberations without a verdict Wednesday, a quiet end to an otherwise eventful day that included a defense request for a mistrial, an armed protester outside the courthouse and a mass pizza party among the demonstrators.
The panel — consisting of seven women and five men — discussed the case for more than seven hours before the judge excused them for the evening. They have spent roughly 16 hours deliberating over the past two days, with no clear indication of where their talks stand.
Jurors sent a note shortly after 11 a.m. Wednesday, asking to see videos of Gaige Grosskreutz’s brief interaction with Rittenhouse after he shot Joseph Rosenbaum and regular and slow-motion video of all three shootings. The jury also requested a high-definition drone video that prosecutors say shows Rittenhouse sparking the confrontation.
According to the jury instructions, the panel can negate Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim if they find he provoked the situation.
The defense objected to jurors seeing the drone video, which the teen’s attorneys repeatedly have tried to ban. They have filed a motion for a mistrial, in part, because they contend the prosecution gave them a shorter, lower-resolution version of the recording than what was shown to the jury. The prosecution said it sent the video file via email at the defense team’s request and that it was compressed in transmission from a Kenosha detective’s iPhone to a defense attorney’s Android phone.
After much discussion about the compressed email, the defense requested another mistrial, arguing they did not have the same access to the evidence. The defense conceded such a request, if granted, would allow for Rittenhouse to be retried.
Both sides had tried to secure the video before the trial, but neither could locate the owner. An anonymous person dropped it off at the district attorney’s office during the trial and both sides stipulated to its authenticity.
The prosecution argues the video shows Rittenhouse pointing his gun at a bystander and Rosenbaum responded by chasing him. Rittenhouse denied pointing at anyone before the pursuit began and he ended up shooting Rosenbaum.
“The defendant lied on the stand about it,” Assistant District Attorney James Kraus said.
The defense, however, argued it was basic fairness.
“How would we object to something we didn’t know existed?” defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said to the judge. “It’s impossible for us to do that. Your job is fairness and being a truth seeker. It’s not debatable that it’s not fair what happened. We didn’t know there was another version. How is that reasonable?”
While the jury debated the very specific legal question at the heart of the teen’s self-defense case, protesters outside the courthouse have been arguing over the broader issues of gun rights and racial inequities that have loomed large over the case from the onset.
Demonstrations had been low-key throughout the trial, but they began to intensify as the jury deliberated. At one point, a group on the courthouse steps chanted “Black Lives Matter,” while a man on a bullhorn needled them about Rosenbaum, one of the men Rittenhouse killed, being a convicted sex offender.
That same man — who brought his dog to the demonstrations Tuesday — returned Wednesday morning with an AR-15. Wearing a tactical vest, button down shirt, bow tie with slacks and dress shoes, the man spent part of the morning yelling “Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization” and screaming “(expletive) BLM!” through a megaphone as he stood in the public way across the street from the courthouse.
Kenosha County sheriff’s deputies told the man, who had a Maserati with Illinois plates and called himself “Maserati Mike,” that he could not have the rifle there because he was within 1,000 feet of a school and did not have a concealed carry permit.
“If you want to be here, you’re going to have to put the rifle away,” a deputy said.
Under Wisconsin law, any individual who knowingly possesses a firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is within 1,000 feet of the grounds of a school is subject to a fine up to $1,000. A sheriff’s spokesman said the incident was resolved without action taken against the man when he voluntarily put away his rifle.
Surrounded by cameras as deputies escorted the man away to record his information, a woman came up to criticize him.
“All that attention you didn’t get in high school? Now you got all the attention you want,” she told him. “Isn’t that so cute?”
The man returned to the courthouse without a rifle, though he kept a sound system that blasted “Build a B*tch” by Bella Poarch and “Ride It” by DJ Regard, among other TikTok hits.
Andrew Durham, who grew up in south suburban Markham and moved to Kenosha just as last year’s unrest struck, wandered out of the courthouse after paying a traffic ticket and into the cacophony of Maserati Mike’s soundtrack battling with music pumped by pro-conviction demonstrators.
Taking in the scene, he said the “nonsense” Kenosha has endured has largely been the work of outsiders, and that locals are ready for it to end.
“I feel like there are a lot of people coming from different places to cause havoc and it’s getting blamed on citizens around here,” he said.
As the day went on, pro-Rittenhouse and pro-conviction demonstrators continued to mix on the courthouse steps, resulting in confrontations and arguments that occasionally drew the attention of Kenosha police.
Some wore attention-grabbing accessories — one person sported chain mail, another a feathered boa — while others shouted through megaphones. Here and there, though, ideological foes shared a laugh or a handshake, and around 3:30 p.m., a man delivered nine deep-dish pizzas to the crowd, which came together for a brief prayer.
“Let’s leave here alive,” said Bishop Tavis Grant of the Rainbow PUSH-Coalition. “Let’s not burn. Let’s not loot. Let’s not tear down, let’s not tear up, let’s not even hurt or harm one another. I can disagree with you without hurting you. I can disagree with you without disrespecting you. I can tell you to go to hell and still want you to make it home.”
The pizzas — three cheese, three sausage and three pepperoni — were a gift from a man who lives in nearby Pleasant Prairie. A supporter of Second Amendment rights, the man, who did not want to give his name, has attended the demonstrations for the past two evenings.
“People have been out here in the cold, just making their voices heard and I thought, ‘what’s better than a pizza party?’ I just wanted to ease the tensions a little bit and not light the powder keg no matter what happens inside the courtroom,” the man said.
The gesture touched Lamar Whitfield, a Hyde Park resident who came to the demonstrations to encourage peace among the participants. He had tears in his eyes as he helped pass out slices.
“It was such a powerful moment when we all got together and prayed,” Whitfield said. “We need to have more moments like this. We have to listen to each other and treat each other with respect.”
The deep-dish detente, however, was short-lived among some. Minutes after polishing off the pizza, there was a skirmish on the courthouse steps. The sheriff’s department said a 20-year-old man was arrested for battery, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and a 34-year-old woman was arrested for disorderly conduct.
Will Phelps, 26, a journalism student from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee who was covering the demonstrations for a school project, said he was body-slammed when he tried to break up a fight between opposing protesters.
Speaking outside the courthouse after the jury went home, his scraped right knuckles covered by a bandage, he said the incident was an anomaly in an otherwise intriguing day.
“Some (protesters) were well-spoken, some were not, some people made good points on both sides, but only one (person) actually moved toward violence,” he said.
Though most who showed up over the last two weeks pressed for a conviction, more Rittenhouse supporters have turned up since deliberations began.
Rittenhouse, then a 17-year-old resident of north suburban Antioch, volunteered to patrol downtown Kenosha in August 2020 amid turmoil surrounding the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man left partially paralyzed after being shot by a white police officer during a domestic disturbance call days earlier. Prosecutors later declined to charge the officer with wrongdoing.
Carrying an AR-15-style rifle that police say a friend illegally purchased for him, Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Grosskreutz during the third night of unrest in the city. Rittenhouse is charged with reckless homicide, intentional homicide and attempted intentional homicide related to his actions toward the men, respectively.
Rittenhouse, who faces five felony charges for his actions that night, has pleaded not guilty and said he shot the men in self-defense.
