Self-defense debate awaits Rittenhouse trial

KENOSHA, Wis. — After more than a year, Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager from Illinois who has been labeled by some as a defender of law and order and by others as a reckless gunman, is set to stand trial on charges of homicide in a Wisconsin courtroom starting Monday.

In Kenosha, a former factory town on the shore of Lake Michigan, the proceedings will take place in the county courthouse that was the stage for demonstrations that erupted in August 2020 after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black resident, seven times in the back during an arrest. For several days, protesters of police violence thronged Kenosha by the thousands, and rioters burned buildings and looted businesses, overwhelming police officers and members of the National Guard.

The third night of protests turned deadly when Rittenhouse, then 17, came to Kenosha with a militarystyle semi-automatic rifle and joined a group of people who said they were there to help keep order on the streets. Within hours, Rittenhouse had shot and killed two men and wounded a third during a confrontation.

Rittenhouse is facing six criminal counts, including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide.

The trial will revive the question of what constitutes self-defense in a country where similar high-profile cases, including the trial of George Zimmerman in Florida in 2013, have ended in acquittal — and where firearms are increasingly a part of everyday American life, especially after a surge of gun buying during the coronavirus pandemic.

The case has also become another flashpoint in the nation’s political divide over the protests and rioting that have swept through American cities in recent years in response to police violence toward Black people.

“It’s a battle of the narratives,” said Steven Wright, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. “People will either see this as a young man who came across state lines with a weapon intending to do trouble, or people will come with the belief that he came here with a medical kit and attempted to defend the law and defend people.”

The trial is expected to last two to three weeks, with jury selection beginning Monday.

Lawyers for Rittenhouse will argue that he was acting in self-defense when he killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, who a witness said had reached for Rittenhouse’s gun and was captured on video pursuing him. As Rittenhouse fled down the street, he shot two other men in pursuit, killing Anthony Huber, 26, who had tried to strike Rittenhouse with a skateboard, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, a medic from West Allis, Wis.

Rittenhouse, now 18, has said he was in Kenosha the night of Aug. 25 to protect businesses from destruction amid the protests of the police. “This wasn’t him taking potshots at looters,” Corey Chirafisi, a lawyer for Rittenhouse, said in a court hearing. “Mr. Rosenbaum was chasing him. That started the whole thing.”

Prosecutors contend Rittenhouse was an interloper from Antioch, Ill., about a 30-minute drive from Kenosha, who was intent on disrupting protests with violence.

“The defendant came to our community,” Thomas Binger, an assistant district attorney, said during a recent pretrial hearing on the case. “He’s not a resident, he’s underage, he’s out after curfew, he’s armed with an illegal weapon. Why? That is the question.”

Jury selection could extend for several days, and Judge Bruce Schroeder of the Kenosha County Circuit Court, the longest-serving circuit court judge in Wisconsin, said he had requested an unusually large jury pool of close to 150 potential jurors.

Mary D.M. Fan, a law professor at the University of Washington, said although the trial would focus on the definition of self-defense, it would also be about the Second Amendment, race, politics and the role of free speech.

“Let’s be real — why is this such a polarizing case?” she said. “It’s also a referendum on fiercely different views on protests that have rocked this nation.”

Rittenhouse