No verdict yet in Kyle Rittenhouse trial after more than 20 hours of deliberations
Day four of deliberations in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is set to begin on Friday as jurors have yet to reach a verdict in the case. Jurors have spent approximately 23 hours deliberating over the past three days.
Defense attorney Mark Richards said this is the longest deliberation he has ever had in his career as a defense trial attorney, CBS Chicago reports. When asked what he thinks is going on in the jury room, he noted that jurors were sitting in two groups of six — leading to speculation there may be a split.
One woman juror on Thursday asked if she could take the jury instructions home with them, and the judge said she could, but could not discuss those instructions or the case itself with anyone.
But unlike on previous days, jurors had no questions and no requests to review any evidence Thursday in the politically and racially fraught case.
Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for killing two men and wounding a third with a rifle during a turbulent night of protests that erupted in Kenosha in the summer of 2020 after a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by a white police officer.
Even as the jury weighed the evidence, two mistrial requests from the defense hung over the case, with the potential to upend the verdict if the panel were to convict Rittenhouse. One of those requests asks the judge to go even further and bar prosecutors from retrying him.
The judge overseeing the case has said the bid for a mistrial will have to be addressed if there is a guilty verdict. If Rittenhouse is acquitted, the dispute won't matter. But if he is found guilty and the judge then declares a mistrial, that would essentially void the verdict.
Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him.