Kyle Rittenhouse has been found not guilty, and cleared of all charges by the jury. Rittenhouse walks free from the courtroom in Wisconsin today.
After a trial that took almost two weeks, with national attention focused on the courthouse, Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all counts, including homicide charges. He had previously been charged with firearms charges, but these were struck by Judge Schroeder.
The teen physically collapsed in tears as the not guilty verdicts were read, regaining his composure as he hugged his defense attorney.
BREAKING: Kyle Rittenhouse collapses crying as he is ACQUITTED of all charges. pic.twitter.com/X1LLehwAhX
— National File (@NationalFile) November 19, 2021
Prior to the jury’s deliberations, Judge Bruce Schroeder removed two counts from the jury’s consideration, including allegations that Kyle Rittenhouse violated a local curfew and that Kyle Rittenhouse illegally transported a weapon across state lines. Judge Schroeder determined either that Rittenhouse did not violate the law in these instances, or that the prosecution did not do enough to provide evidence of wrongdoing.
The trial had come under severe scrutiny, with the prosecution behaving in a strange manner at various times. During the prosecution’s closing argument during the Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial on Monday, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger picked up an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and shouldered it in a shooting position with the barrel pointed in the jury’s general direction towards the left side of the courtroom with his finger inside the trigger guard, in a violation of firearm safety etiquette.
The media coverage of the trial was intense. On Wednesday, Judge Schroeder made several statements about the media’s handling of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and admitted that the media’s belligerent framing of the case has led him to reconsider whether he will allow future trials to be televised.
Only a day later, an MSNBC journalist was caught by police following the jury bus after they had left court where they deliberated the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse. The jury was leaving the courthouse in a bus that had the windows blocked to protect the identities of the jurors, when the journalist ran a red light and was caught by police.
Many were concerned about the possibility of riots following the result. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers mobilized the Wisconsin National Guard troops not far from Kenosha in order to deal with potential unrest. Evers deployed close to 500 troops outside Kenosha in order to help “hundreds of officers from volunteering law enforcement agencies” if any unrest were to occur.
