Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois 18-year-old who became a right-wing cause célèbre after he shot and killed two protesters and wounded a third amid civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, was acquitted Friday on all counts. The verdict, which found Rittenhouse not guilty on homicide and reckless endangerment charges that could have put him in prison for life, capped a heated trial that put issues of race and vigilante justice in America on the stand.
While Republicans like Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn applauded the jury’s decision, there were other politicians appalled. “What we are witnessing is a system functioning as designed and protecting those it was designed for,” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “My heart still breaks for the communities and families whose grief now compounds, and the countless others who will be denied and deprived in similar scenes across the country.”
Rittenhouse, then 17, claimed he went from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha in August 2020 to “protect” private property from protesters following the shooting of Jacob Blake, who is Black, by white police officer Rusten Sheskey. “I don’t know how they came to the final conclusion that he’s innocent,” Justin Blake, Jacob’s uncle, said outside the courthouse, “but this is why African Americans say the whole damn system is guilty.”
During the contentious trial, Rittenhouse and his defense team argued that he had killed Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum—and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz—in self-defense. But prosecutor Thomas Binger described the white teenager as a “wannabe soldier” with a semi-automatic weapon who came to Wisconsin “looking for trouble.” “This is the provocation,” Binger said in closing arguments Monday, showing the jury footage of Rittenhouse pointing his weapon at protesters. “This is what starts this incident.”
“You lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun, when you are the one creating the danger, when you’re the one provoking other people,” Binger added.
But the jury ultimately sided with Rittenhouse in the trial. “Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son,” the parents of Huber said in a statement. “It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they created to justify shooting people in the street.”
As the trial played out, significant scrutiny was directed at Judge Bruce Schroeder, who clashed with prosecutors and seemed at times to align himself with the defense, at one point encouraging jurors to applaud an army veteran who served as an expert witness for Rittenhouse’s legal team. It’s unclear how much Schroeder’s conduct during the trial impacted the case; for instance, his angry confrontation with Binger, who irked the judge for attempting to introduce video evidence he’d already banned, came without jurors present. But several of his decisions, including to prohibit prosecutors from describing those killed by Rittenhouse as “victims” but allowing the defense to cast them as “looters,” would certainly seem to have set favorable conditions for the Illinois teen. (Schroeder also dismissed a charge of illegal possession of a weapon by a minor, one of the seven counts Rittenhouse faced, before closing arguments on Monday.) At the very least, Schroeder’s behavior during the trial—which included making a bizarre racist joke about “Asian food”—served to undermine confidence in his fairness and impartiality in what was already a contentious case.
The judge claimed to want to keep political concerns out of the courtroom. “This is not going to be a political trial,” Schroeder said in September, as he ruled that prosecutors could not discuss Rittenhouse’s association with apparent Proud Boys or show video prosecutors said depicted him expressing a desire to “start shooting rounds” at people he believed to be shoplifting from a CVS two weeks before he killed Huber and Rosenbaum in Kenosha. But the case was always infused with politics, as evidenced by the conservatives who took up Rittenhouse’s cause, and tied to issues of race and gun violence.
“Allowing armed vigilantism, which follows a disturbing pattern of white gunmen targeting communities of color, to continue unchecked and without consequence must end. Victims and survivors deserve accountability,” Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention group, Moms Demand Action, tweeted after the verdict. “We will keep fighting until our system protects everyone.”
This article has been updated with responses to the verdict.
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