Richards, Rittenhouse’s attorney, joked that the case was the first he tried that two presidents of the United States commented on “and both of them had such different beliefs.”
The case became so politicized, in fact, that Judge Schroeder instructed jurors to disregard comments made by Trump and Biden. Trump defended Rittenhouse’s actions, saying the teen had acted in self-defense as protesters “violently attacked him” and suggested the teen was “in very big trouble” and “probably would have been killed” during the confrontation. Rittenhouse’s actions were thrust into a hotly contested presidential campaign last year between Biden and then-President Trump, with both visiting Kenosha in the days following the shooting of Blake and the deaths of the protesters.īiden’s campaign featured a photo of Rittenhouse in an ad that criticized Trump for refusing to condemn white supremacists. “Joe Biden needs to publicly apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse,” Republican U.S. On the right, Republicans railed against Biden for suggesting on social media and in a campaign ad that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist. The judge overseeing Rittenhouse’s case, Bruce Schroeder, barred discussion of that evidence, ruling it would impede on Rittenhouse’s right to a fair trial. Prosecutors said they had evidence Rittenhouse met for lunch after a hearing earlier this year with several high-ranking members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group known for street fights that the Anti-Defamation League characterizes as “misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigration,” with some members espousing “white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies.”
ACQUITTAL VS NOT GUILTY TRIAL
“We must do better than this.”īefore the trial began, it was widely known Rittenhouse benefited from fundraising tied to far-right interests that tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and that he flashed a hand sign appropriated by white supremacist groups while wearing a “Free as F - k” T-shirt and drinking in a Wisconsin bar following his arrest. It’s a tragedy that the court could not acknowledge that basic fact,” Pritzker said. “Carrying a loaded gun into a community 20 miles from your home and shooting unarmed citizens is fundamentally wrong. Pritzker said in a statement that the two men killed by Rittenhouse, Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, “deserved to be alive today. “I understand why so many Americans are frustrated by it, because I am one.”ĭemocratic Gov. “I’m incredibly disappointed by the verdict,” Duckworth said in an interview. She said there “needs to be an investigation on how someone could actually go into a crowd of people brandishing a gun as people were exercising their First Amendment rights and kill two of those people and get away with it.”
Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said she was “astonished and deeply troubled” that Rittenhouse was acquitted. “What Kyle Rittenhouse did was reckless, dangerous, and showed an utter disregard for human life.”ĭemocratic U.S. “However, no one should ever take the law into their own hands, or attempt to make themselves the judge, jury and executioner,” Lightfoot said. In a statement, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot offered her condolences to the families of those who were shot by Rittenhouse and said “under our constitutional system, we must respect the jury’s decision.” Pritzker launches a public safety initiative to provide community based solutions to prevent gun violence on Nov. Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks before the signing of an executive order as Gov. The stream of political consciousness on social media and on cable news networks, however, made clear many felt otherwise. I don’t want to make it bigger than it is.” … I don’t know that there’s any broader implications. It was a case of self-defense, the right to protect one’s self. “Is it ever going to happen again? Is there ever going to be a total unrest in Kenosha or some other city and that’s going to happen? I just don’t see that. “I don’t think it’s that kind of case,” Richards said. In speaking to reporters after the trial, Rittenhouse’s attorney Mark Richards agreed larger conclusions shouldn’t be drawn from the verdict. “And this is one of those cases that I don’t think is necessarily transferable.” “Often times criminal cases don’t lend themselves to being some referendum on a particular movement or viewpoint,” he said. “What’s on trial? A criminal case is a person and that person’s specific actions to the extent that people want to extrapolate meaning from a particular verdict.” “I try to remind people that what’s on trial in a criminal case isn’t a political viewpoint. But he cautioned the Rittenhouse case was not that type of trial. Gross said sometimes that’s the case, as when the conviction of Harvey Weinstein came to symbolize the #MeToo movement.
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