RITTENHOUSE ACQUITTED
‘He wants to get on with his life. ... he did not start this’
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges Friday after pleading self-defense in the deadly Kenosha, Wis., shootings that became a flashpoint in the debate over guns, vigilantism and racial injustice in the U.S.
Mr. Rittenhouse, 18, began to choke up, fell forward toward the defense table and then hugged one of his attorneys as he heard a court clerk recite “not guilty” five times. His mother, seated nearby on a courtroom bench, gasped in delight, cried and hugged others around her.
A sheriff’s deputy immediately whisked him out a back door.
“He wants to get on with his life,” defense attorney Mark Richards said. “He has a huge sense of relief for what the jury did to him today. He wishes none of this ever happened. But as he said when he testified, he did not start this.”
He said Mr. Rittenhouse, who wants to be a nurse, is in counseling for post traumatic stress disorder and will probably move away because “it’s too dangerous” for him to continue to live in the area.
Mr. Rittenhouse was charged with homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangering for killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle in the summer of 2020 during a tumultuous night of protests over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer.
Mr. Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, said he went to Kenosha to protect property from rioters. He is white, as were those he shot.
The anonymous jury, whose racial makeup was not disclosed by the court but appeared to be overwhelmingly white,
deliberated for close to 3½ days.
Mr. Rittenhouse could have gotten life in prison if found guilty on the most serious charge, first-degree intentional homicide, or what some other states call firstdegree murder. Two other charges each carried over 60 years behind bars.
Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said his office respects the jury’s decision, and he asked the public to “accept the verdicts peacefully and not resort to violence.”
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who announced last week that 500 National Guard members stood ready in case of trouble after the verdict, likewise pleaded for calm.
As he dismissed the jurors who sat in judgment in the politically combustible case, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder assured them the court would take “every measure” to keep them safe.
The shootings exposed a deep divide in the U.S., with some Americans condemning Mr. Rittenhouse as a vigilante, while others on the right hailed him as a hero who exercised his Second Amendment gun rights and tried to put a stop to lawlessness. The reaction to the verdict reflected the same divide.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, denounced the outcome. He, like many civil rights activists, saw a racial double standard at work in the case.
“Over the last few weeks, many dreaded the outcome we just witnessed,” Mr. Barnes said. “The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is what we should expect from our judicial system, but that standard is not always applied equally. We have seen so many Black and brown youth killed, only to be put on trial posthumously, while the innocence of Kyle Rittenhouse was virtually demanded by the judge.”
Pittsburgh Mayor-elect Ed Gainey also put out a statement, “Today’s decision in Wisconsin is a clear reminder to us all that we have much work left to do to fulfill the promise of equal justice under the law; this is work that I am committed to every day.
“Today and every day, I stand with the victims who stood up for justice, to protect their neighbors, and for their families whose lives will be forever changed by today’s verdict.”
Political figures on the right, meanwhile, welcomed the verdict and condemned the case brought against Mr. Rittenhouse.
“All of us who knew what actually happened in Kenosha last year assumed this would be the verdict,” tweeted Republican former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “Thankfully, the jury thought the same.”
The case was part of an extraordinary confluence of trials that reflected the deep divide over race in the United States: In Georgia, three white men are on trial in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, while in Virginia, a trial is underway in a lawsuit over the deadly white -supremacist rally held in Charlottesville in 2017.
The bloodshed in Kenosha took place during a summer of sometimes-violent protests set off across the U.S. by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other cases involving the police use of force against Black people.
Mr. Rittenhouse was 17 when he went to Kenosha from his home in nearby Antioch, Ill., after businesses were ransacked and burned in the nights that followed Blake’s shooting. Mr. Rittenhouse carried a weapon authorities said was illegally purchased for the underage young man, who joined other armed civilians on the streets.
Bystander and drone video captured most of the frenzied chain of events that followed: Mr. Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, then shot to death protester Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded demonstrator Gaige Grosskreutz, now 28.
Then-President Donald Trump said it appeared Mr. Rittenhouse had been “very violently attacked.” Supporters donated more than $2 million toward his legal defense.