Jurors Sent Home After Day 1 of Deliberations in Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

Court is scheduled to resume Wednesday morning

Live updates below

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After more than eight hours of deliberations, the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial has been dismissed for the evening after not reaching a verdict Tuesday.

Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed the jury for the day just before 6 p.m., with the group not coming to an agreement on a verdict on the first day of deliberations.

Jurors were given the case just after 9 a.m. Tuesday following final instructions from the judge, and worked through most of the morning and afternoon, stopping for lunch around 1 p.m.

The jury made multiple requests to the court for extra copies of different parts of the jury instructions, ultimately asking for copies for each juror of the 36-page document.

Kyle Rittenhouse selected six pieces of paper from a drum, determining who will be the six alternate jurors and who will be the final 12 jurors deciding his fate in the murder trial over his killing two protesters and injuring a third last summer.

The day started with Rittenhouse reaching into a bin and picking the numbers of six jurors, who were then dismissed into the alternate pool.

There are five counts remaining against Rittenhouse after a weapons charge was dismissed by Schroeder during the trial.

Rittenhouse, now 18, was in Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to protect property from the damaging demonstrations that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer last summer.

While Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, the case has stirred debate over vigilantism, the right to bear arms and the unrest that erupted around the U.S. that summer over the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Blake.

Rittenhouse testified during the trial that he acted in self-defense. Wisconsin’s self-defense law allows someone to use deadly force only if “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm,” and the jury has been tasked with deciding whether Rittenhouse believed he was in such peril, and whether that belief was reasonable under the circumstances.

LIVE COVERAGE: A live feed of Kyle Rittenhouse's murder trial is available when court is in session.

Here were the latest updates as the case unfolded Tuesday.

-After more than eight hours of deliberations, jurors have been dismissed for the day by Judge Bruce Schroeder.

No verdict was reached, and jurors will return for more deliberations Wednesday.

-The Rittenhouse jury resumed deliberations Tuesday afternoon, and made a second request to the judge in the case for 11 copies of the full instructions given by the court.

-- The jury is breaking for lunch. Their choice is pizza. About an hour ago they asked for extra copies of the jury instructions, specifically pages one through six, which relate to self defense and provocation.

-- In Judge Bruce Schroeder’s Kenosha courtroom, Kyle Rittenhouse reached into a bin and picked the numbers of six jurors who will be dismissed. The remaining 12 will deliberate his fate.

The six alternate jurors will be kept at the courthouse until those deliberations are complete.

Deliberations will start now. The remaining 12 are being told they must only choose one verdict for each of the five remaining counts against Rittenhouse.

-- Judge released jury for the day at approximately 5:56 p.m. and announced deliberations will begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

-- Prosecution began rebuttal to defense closing arguments at approximately 4:53 p.m.

-- Mark Richards started his closing arguments by attacking the men Kyle Rittenhouse killed. “This case is not a game,” Richards told the jury. “It is my client’s life.”

“We don’t play fast and loose,” he said, “pretending Mr. Rosenbaum was citizen A number one guy…he was a bad man…he was there…he was causing trouble…he was a rioter and my client had to deal with him that night alone.”

-- Mark Richards compared the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum to that of Jacob Blake, the Black man whose shooting by a white police officer sparked the Kenosha unrest.

“Other people in this community have shot people seven times,” he said, “and it's been found to be OK... My client did it four times to protect his life from Mr. Rosenbaum.”

“I’m sorry, that’s what happened,” he said.

-- “There is no doubt the defendant committed these crimes," Prosecutor Thomas Binger told the jury as he wrapped up his closing arguments.

“No reasonable person would have done what the defendant did and that makes your decision easy,” he said. “He is guilty of all counts.”

After a 20 minute break, the defense will begin its closings. When they conclude, prosecutors will get a half hour to rebut the points brought up during that closing. As it is the prosecution’s burden to prove Rittenhouse guilty, they get the last word.

-- Prosecutor Binger quickly gets to the heart of his argument.

“When the defendant provokes the incident, he loses the right to self defense,” he tells the jury. “You cannot claim self defense over a danger you create.”

-- Prosecutor Thomas Binger has begun his closing arguments in the case against Kyle Rittenhouse.

“I think we can all agree, we shouldn’t have 17-year-olds running around with AR-15s, because this is what happens," he tells the jury.

-- Judge halts the reading of jury instructions for a conference on the lesser charges. He wants them not to consider the lesser charges if they agree, guilty or not guilty, on the more significant charge. Prosecutions says that’s not the law.

-- In the instructions regarding the homicide charge against Rittenhouse, the judge cautions the jury: “you should make every reasonable effort to unanimously agree on the charge of first degree intentional homicide before moving on to the second.”

-- Jury instructions begin. This will take about 45 minutes. They are hearing first about the law regarding self defense.

-- The judge at Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial has dismissed a count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18.

The charge is only a misdemeanor, but it had appeared to be among the likeliest to net a conviction for prosecutors. There’s no dispute that Rittenhouse was 17 when he carried an AR-style semi-automatic rifle on the streets of Kenosha in August 2020 and used it to kill two men and wound a third.

But the defense argued that Wisconsin’s statute had an exception that could be read to clear Rittenhouse. That exception involves whether or not a rifle or shotgun is short-barreled.

After prosecutors conceded in court Monday that Rittenhouse’s rifle was not short-barreled, Judge Schroeder dismissed the charge.

NBC Chicago/Associated Press
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