KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse opened Monday with the challenging task of seating jurors who hadn’t already made up their minds about the young aspiring police officer who shot two people to death and wounded a third during a night of anti-racism protests in Kenosha last year.
The jury that is ultimately selected in the politically charged case will have to decide whether Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, as his lawyers claim, or was engaged in vigilantism when he opened fire with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.
By late afternoon, at least 28 of the 150 or so prospective jurors summoned had been dismissed, about a dozen of them because they had strong opinions about the case or doubts they could be fair. Some also expressed fear about serving on the jury because of public anger but were not immediately let go.
Rittenhouse was 17 when he traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, just across the Wisconsin state line, during unrest that broke out in August 2020 after a white Kenosha police officer shot and wounded Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back. Rittenhouse said he went there to protect property after two previous nights marked by arson, gunfire and the ransacking of businesses.
The now-18-year-old Rittenhouse faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him, first-degree homicide.
As jury selection got underway, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder stressed repeatedly that jurors must decide the case solely on what they hear in the courtroom, and cautioned: “This is not a political trial.”
“It was mentioned by both political campaigns and the presidential campaign last year, in some instances very, very imprudently,” he said.
The judge said Rittenhouse’s constitutional right to a fair trial, not the Second Amendment right to bear arms, will come into play, and “I don’t want it to get sidetracked into other issues.”
Among those dismissed by the judge were a man who said he was at the site of the protests when “all that happened” and a woman who said she knew one of the potential witnesses in the case well and would probably give more weight to that person’s testimony.
Another woman who said she watched a livestream video of what happened was dismissed because she wasn’t sure if she could put aside what she saw. One person was dropped from the case after she said she believes in the Biblical injunction “Thou shall not kill” even in cases of self-defense. A man who said he had “been commenting consistently on news feeds and Facebook” was also excused.
A man said his son is friends with the person who bought the gun that Rittenhouse later used in the shooting. He was not immediately dismissed by the judge.
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