Rittenhouse lawyers’ strategy at trial: Don’t ‘crusade,’ defend
Soon after a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges against him, defense attorney Mark Richards took a swipe at his predecessors, telling reporters that their tactics – leaning into Rittenhouse’s portrayal as a rallying point for the right to carry weapons and defend oneself – were not his.
“I was hired by the first two lawyers. I’m not going to use their names,” Richards said Friday. “They wanted to use Kyle for a cause and something that I think was inappropriate – and I don’t represent causes. I represent clients.”
Richards, beaming as he talked to reporters outside his Racine, Wisconsin, law office after the acquittal, said that to him, the only thing that mattered was “whether he was found not guilty or not.”
It seemed an apt comment from Richards. Along with co-counsel Corey Chirafisi, he spent the months leading up to the case in virtual silence – “I don’t do interviews,” he said brusquely to one emailed request in December – and sought at trial to minimize the polarizing questions about Second Amendment rights.
Hours after the verdict, Fox News touted an exclusive interview and upcoming documentary on Rittenhouse, with footage that made it clear a crew had been embedded with him during the trial. Richards told The Associated Press on Saturday that he opposed the crew as inappropriate, but that it was arranged by those raising money for Rittenhouse.
Regardless of what was happening behind the scenes, the strategy from Richards and Chirafisi in court was clear: get the jury to regard Rittenhouse as a scared teenager who shot to save his life.
They repeatedly focused on the two minutes, 55 seconds in which the shootings unfolded – the critical moments in which Rittenhouse, then 17, said he felt a threat and pulled the trigger.
“These guys have a client who is a human being ... that’s what they’re rightly focused on,” said Dean Strang, a defense attorney and distinguished professor in residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
In the days after the shootings, Rittenhouse – who brought an AR-style rifle to a protest, saying he was protecting a stranger’s property – was initially represented by attorneys John Pierce and Lin Wood, who painted Rittenhouse as a defender of liberty and a patriot who was exercising his right to bear arms. Pierce tweeted a video of Rittenhouse speaking by phone from a jail in Illinois, where he’s from, thanking supporters.
Rivers of money flowed in to a legal defense fund – more than enough for Rittenhouse to post his $2 million bail – but Wood left the case and became active in pressing the false claim that Donald Trump had won the presidential election.
Pierce left the criminal case in December after prosecutors said he shouldn’t be allowed to raise money for Rittenhouse, but he stayed on the civil side of things until Rittenhouse said he fired him in February.
On Friday, Richards recounted his first meeting with Rittenhouse: “I told him when I first met him, if he’s looking for somebody to go off on a crusade, I wasn’t his lawyer.”
They came to court prepared. Richards used several videos during his opening statement – over the objection of prosecutors who did not seize on that opportunity. They argued vehemently for a mistrial when they felt prosecutors were acting in bad faith, and appeared to outmaneuver prosecutors in getting a gun charge dismissed.
And they made a careful calculation with perhaps their biggest decision: whether Rittenhouse should take the stand, risking a potentially damaging cross-examination. Richards said they tested their case against a pair of mock juries and found it was “substantially better” with Rittenhouse testifying.