KENOSHA, Wis. (CN) — A Wisconsin judge on Friday blocked most of a raft of additional evidence submitted by prosecutors and the defense six weeks ahead of the trial of an 18-year-old charged with shooting three and killing two at a protest last summer.
Attorneys representing Kyle Rittenhouse and the Kenosha County District Attorney’s office brought multiple motions over the summer to submit supplementary evidence they felt would contextualize the night Rittenhouse, then 17, shot three and killed two on Aug. 25, 2020, during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse is charged with five felonies—including intentional and reckless homicide—and one misdemeanor gun charge for killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, 26. The 18-year-old faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz were protesting Blake’s police shooting on the night of the incident, while Rittenhouse reportedly came to Kenosha from his mom’s house in Illinois to protect life and property at the chaotic protests, during which dozens of cars and businesses were torched. Rittenhouse’s defense maintains he shot in self-defense while he was being chased by protesters.
Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder denied almost all of the attorneys’ motions for additional evidence on Friday, although he left some matters regarding admissibility of expert testimony and final decisions on some of the evidence until closer to the trial, for which jury selection is scheduled to begin in Kenosha on Nov. 1.
Overall, prosecutors and the defense both agree that Rittenhouse’s murder trial is not a whodunnit — there is widely circulated video footage of Rittenhouse firing his AR-15 at the protesters. The central questions, they say, are the teen’s state of mind that night and whether he was reasonable in his actions.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger unsuccessfully tried to bring evidence on Friday establishing Rittenhouse’s state of mind surrounding the shootings, particularly regarding his attitudes toward the protests and what he said is Rittenhouse’s tendency toward the unjustified use of violence in the name of self-defense.
One of Binger’s motions sought to bring video evidence from June 2020 showing Rittenhouse assaulting a girl that was in a fight with his sister; another related to video from about two weeks before the protest shooting showing Rittenhouse at a CVS saying he wished he had his AR-15 to shoot people he thought were committing a crime at the store.
Binger pointed to this and other evidence as proving Rittenhouse is “essentially a teenage vigilante involving himself in things that don’t concern him,” further calling him a “chaos tourist.”
Corey Chirafisi, a Madison-based attorney for Rittenhouse’s defense, felt the two incidents were irrelevant and added nothing to an understanding of Rittenhouse’s state of mind or motive. Schroeder agreed, saying the evidence was trying to prove Rittenhouse’s propensity for violence even though the two incidents had nothing to do with the protest shootings.
Binger also wanted to bring evidence of a meeting between Rittenhouse and members of the Proud Boys—a male-only, right-wing organization that engaged in violent clashes at many protests last summer and is categorized as a white supremacist hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center—at a Racine-area bar in January. This meeting ultimately resulted in Schroeder modifying Rittenhouse’s bond so he could not consume alcohol and/or knowingly fraternize with hate groups.
But Schroeder blocked this evidence as well and declined to make any judgment on the Proud Boys generally, saying of the meeting at the bar that “assuming that these people are a known group inclined towards violence… there’s still no suggestion in the evidence that this was anything but a happenstance occurrence.”
Chirafisi agreed with this tack, offering that analysis of Rittenhouse’s cellular data and other evidence reveals he does not have and never had any affiliation with the Proud Boys or any other known militia-style or white supremacist groups.
Schroeder also denied a motion from Rittenhouse’s defense that sought to submit evidence of Rosenbaum’s criminal history, including an Arizona conviction and prison sentence for sexual conduct with a minor.
Mark Richards, a Racine-based lawyer for Rittenhouse’s defense, additionally submitted evidence showing that Rosenbaum bragged about having gotten out of jail and not being afraid to go back on the night he was shot at the protest, as well as evidence supporting the notion that he tried to take Rittenhouse’s gun before he was shot. Schroeder found the first point intriguing but erred on the side of allowing the jury to speculate what Rosenbaum’s motivations were for attending the protest.
The judge declined the state’s motion to add to evidence a list of donors to two online fundraising arms for Rittenhouse’s benefit that raised millions, including the #Fightback Foundation spearheaded by prominent defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood, who was once on Rittenhouse’s legal team. Richards said Friday that there has been no contact or cooperation with #Fightback or Wood since they distanced themselves from Rittenhouse’s legal team months ago.
Another point yet to be determined is how a jury will be selected for Rittenhouse’s trial. All present at Friday’s hearing seemed to concede that the case has attracted massive attention and finding jurors with no opinion on Rittenhouse or his crimes may prove challenging, despite Schroeder’s steadfast assertion that “this will not be a political trial.”
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