Jury in Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Must Weigh Complex Legal Questions
The New York Times
As they deliberate on a verdict, the jurors must consider five separate felony counts, as well as the possibility of less serious charges.
KENOSHA, Wis. — The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, which has played out over the last two weeks, has seemed at times to come down to a matter of deciding whether Mr. Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense when he shot three men amid demonstrations in Kenosha, Wis., or whether he was committing serious crimes, including first-degree intentional homicide.
But the 12 jurors who will enter a second day of deliberations in the case on Wednesday are actually tasked with a far more complex set of decisions: They must weigh five individual felony counts that Mr. Rittenhouse has been charged with, each reflecting prosecutors’ claims about different portions of his behavior that night in August 2020.
Jury deliberations began on Tuesday morning in the trial of Mr. Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he came to Kenosha with a semiautomatic rifle amid unrest over a police shooting and fired eight shots, killing two men and wounding a third. The five charges he faces include first-degree intentional homicide, which is called first-degree murder in other states and is among the most serious charges on the books in Wisconsin. If convicted of that charge, he could face life in prison.
