Day 3: Deliberations in Rittenhouse Trial; MSNBC banned after bus incident
Judge Bruce Schroeder, Wisconsin circuit court judge for Kenosha County.[Courtroom pool video, via ABC]
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) – The jury at Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial has completed a third day of deliberations without reaching a verdict.
Earlier in the day, the judge at Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial banned MSNBC from the courthouse Thursday after police said they briefly detained a man who had followed the jury bus and may have tried to photograph jurors. Judge Bruce Schroeder said the man had claimed to be working for MSNBC.
NBC News said the man was a freelancer who never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations and never intended to photograph them.
The jurors are anonymous by order of the court. Schroeder said they were riding in a bus whose windows had been covered over to keep them from seeing any signs about the case.
Schroeder said the matter is under further investigation.
Meanwhile, as the jury began deliberating for a third day, two mistrial requests from the defense are hanging over the politically and racially fraught case. Last week the defense asked for a mistrial after saying the prosecutor asked improper questions.
A second mistrial motion was sparked by a jury request Wednesday to re-watch video in the case. Rittenhouse’s attorneys say the defense received an inferior copy of a key video from prosecutors. The judge has not ruled on the request.