Jury for Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial selected in 1 day, allowing opening arguments to start Tuesday

At the end of a long day of jury selection Monday, 11 women and 9 men were chosen for the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for shooting three white men — two of them fatally — with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle during a late night protest against the police shooting of a Black man in August 2020. He faces two homicide counts, one count of attempted homicide, and charges of reckless endangerment and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor.

The jury will decide if Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, as his lawyers will argue, or whether he engaged in vigilantism when he traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois to stand guard with other armed anti-protesters at a mechanic shop. The court did not give a racial breakdown of the 12 jurors and eight alternates, but at least two are gun owners, one said she was frightened during the protests, and another juror is a pharmacist who said she was robbed at gunpoint in 2012, The Associated Press recounts.

Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder repeatedly told the jurors on Monday that they will base their verdict on only what they hear in the courtroom. "This is not a political trial," he insisted. "It was mentioned by both political campaigns and the presidential campaign last year, in some instances very, very imprudently," but "I don't want it to get sidetracked into other issues," like the Second Amendment.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

During a delay Monday, Schroeder had the prospective jurors play a game of Jeopardy!, "something he sometimes does as attorneys get organized," AP reports. The judge has also shown his idiosyncrasies by telling prosecutors they cannot call the men Rittenhouse shot "victims" but Rittenhouse's lawyers can refer to them as looters, rioters, or arsonists, even if they weren't.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.