Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said Tuesday morning that court officers saw a person take a video of the jurors in the high-profile Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
Schroeder, before the day’s testimony began, said officers had taken the cellphone from the person recording jurors getting on a bus and erased the footage. He added that new procedures would be instituted to prevent a similar situation.Â
“The officers approached the person and required him or her … I didn’t even ask … to delete the video,” Schroeder said.Â
He added that if the same person is caught trying to out the identity of jurors, the phone would be confiscated.
“Something like that should not occur, and I am frankly quite surprised it did,” Schroeder said.
The judge did not provide any additional details.Â
Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for killing two men and wounding another with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle during a night of violent clashes that broke out in the Wisconsin city following the shooting of Jacob Blake Jr., a black man, by a white police officer. Â
Rittenhouse, a one-time police youth cadet and part-time YMCA lifeguard from Antioch, Illinois, went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, with his friend in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from vandals. Rittenhouse said he fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded EMT Gaige Grosskreutz in self-defense.Â
His lawyers have argued that Rosenbaum cornered Rittenhouse, that Huber attacked him with a skateboard, and that Grosskreutz might have opened fire if Rittenhouse hadn’t shot him first. Grosskreutz testified Monday that he was pointing his own gun at Rittenhouse (unintentionally, he said) when he was shot.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Prosecutors have painted Rittenhouse as a teenager looking for trouble who deliberately inserted himself into a volatile situation and carried around a gun he shouldn’t have had and wasn’t trained to use.Â
The prosecution is likely to wrap up its case Tuesday.Â
