A juror was expelled from the trial of a young man accused of killing two people during an anti-racist protest in the United States after making a joke of a black man wounded by police.
The man was on the jury judging Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, arrested on August 26, 2020 on suspicion of having murdered two people during demonstrations against racism and police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
According to prosecutors, the juror, a middle-aged white man, joked about the case of Jacob Blake, a black man who was shot several times by police in the city, on Aug. 23 last year. A video shows police shooting him in the back, at close range, in front of his three young children.
Blake survived the shooting, but was admitted in critical condition, was handcuffed to a hospital bed, and paralyzed from the waist down. The case generated outrage and was the motivation for the anti-racist protest in which Rittenhouse shot three protesters, killing two of them.
On Wednesday (3), the third day of Rittenhouse’s trial, prosecutors said one of the jurors asked the judge’s aide: “Why did the Kenosha police shoot Jacob Blake seven times? Because they ran out of bullets.”
Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger told the magistrate that the joke was in bad taste and showed racial prejudice.
The judge, Bruce Schroeder, asked the man to repeat the joke, but he refused to do so and looked offended when questioned. “I had nothing to do with the case,” he said.
Schroeder then asserted that it was important to maintain public confidence in the case and that he had no choice but to remove the man from trial. That left 19 people on the jury — 12 main jurors and 7 alternates.
Rittenhouse faces charges of, among other crimes, murder and attempted murder for shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz — the first two died from their injuries. At the time, he was 17 years old.
The teenager lived in Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles from Kenosha. He crossed the border into the neighboring state in response to the call of civil groups, formed mostly by white people, who organized themselves on social networks to summon activists against the protest agenda.
These groups claimed to protect property from looting and depredation during demonstrations. Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-15 rifle. Images recorded by witnesses recorded the moment when protesters tried to disarm him after he shot one of them. The teenager then fired point-blank shots at his pursuers, which resulted in two deaths.
“It appears to be a militia member who has decided to be a vigilante, take the law into his own hands and target innocent protesters,” Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes said at the time.
Grosskreutz, who survived Rittenhouse’s shootings, sued the Kenosha police department as well as the local sheriff’s office. In the action, he accuses authorities of having delegated to a “roaming militia” the mission to “protect property and help maintain order.”​
Jury with only one black in Georgia
This Wednesday (3), in Georgia, the selection of a jury of 11 whites and 1 black for the trial of three white men who chased and shot and killed a young black man last year aroused criticism.
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was murdered while exercising in Satilla Shores, a mostly white suburb of Brunswick, in February 2020. Arbery was unarmed and was killed by a shotgun blast fired by a resident, who was chasing him along with the father and a neighbor. They claimed self-defense.
The case intensified national protests against racism and police violence last year after a video of the shooting, recorded with a cell phone, was broadcast.
Jury selection in Glynn County Superior Court took three weeks. Prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to argue that defense attorneys were rejecting many potential jurors as black, which the US Supreme Court finds unconstitutional.
The victim’s father, Marcus Arbery, 58, said he was dismayed by the racial makeup of the jury, but said justice would prevail. “They can choose whichever jury they want, but the evidence will show that they killed my son in cold blood,” he said.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley said he accepted allegations of “race neutrality” made by defense attorneys for Gregory McMichael, his son Travis and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan.
The three men pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, including murder and assault.
In another case that sparked protests against police violence and racism, the death of George Floyd asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, the composition of the jury was different: there were four black jurors, six white and two multiracial.
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