(Washington) Self-defense or provocation? The prosecution and the defense delivered presentations on Tuesday at the antipodes during the murder trial of a young American who killed two people on the sidelines of the anti-racist protests in the summer of 2020.
With the selection of jurors completed in one day, the substantive proceedings began in the court in Kenosha, a town in the northern United States where Kyle Rittenhouse, then 17, shot dead two men and injured a third in gunfire. confused circumstances.
The drama, which mirrors American society’s fractures over guns and the Black Lives Matter movement, came on the evening of August 25, 2020, “after two of the toughest nights on record.” the city, recalled prosecutor Thomas Binger.
PHOTO SEAN KRAJACIC, THE KENOSHA NEWS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyle Rittenhouse speaking with his attorney Corey Chirafisi ahead of opening defense statements at the Kenosha County courthouse in Wisconsin on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. Rittenhouse is charged with killing and injuring two people a third during a demonstration against police brutality in Kenosha last year.
Kenosha, a town in the Great Lakes region, was set on fire after white police seriously injured a young black man, Jacob Blake, by shooting him in the back during an attempted stop.
On the third day of the riots, “Kyle Rittenhouse fitted himself with a loaded AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and shot dead Joseph Rosenbaum, an unarmed man, who died from a bullet in the back,” he said. said the prosecutor.
“Ladies and gentlemen, he acted in self-defense”, retorted the accused’s lawyer, Mark Richards: “the evidence will show that he acted reasonably, under the circumstances of that night, after having been attacked by Mr. Rosenbaum. ”
According to his lawyer “Kyle Rittenhouse did not want a confrontation, did not seek trouble”, but Joseph Rosenbaum “lit the fuse” by pouncing on his client. “He probably thought he could take his gun,” continued Me Richards. “He was wrong, Kyle Rittenhouse protected himself and protected his gun,” he said.
After these first shots “other individuals attacked him in the street like an animal” and again, the young man defended himself, the lawyer said again to justify the second dead and injured.
But for the prosecution, Kyle Rittenhouse, who initially came to join a group of armed men to protect a business, was in fact seeking to do battle.
Once this business was safe, he could have returned home, but he “decided to venture into the crowd, cross the line erected by the police and march towards a group of hostile demonstrators,” said the prosecutor.
Then, it was he who “started the confrontation” with Jacob Rosenbaum, before the latter launched in pursuit, added Thomas Binger. Others then pounced on him to disarm him, he pleaded.
The hearing of witnesses and the presentation of evidence must now last two or three weeks before the jury renders its verdict.