As jury selection begins for Kyle Rittenhouse, the defense will put the men he shot on trial
CHICAGO — With jury selection set to begin Monday in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder case, his defense team has signaled it intends to put the men he shot on trial, too.
It’s a strategy bolstered by a series of pretrial rulings by a Kenosha County judge with a long-held reputation for giving defendants wide latitude to present a defense and a hard rule against using the word “victim” in his courtroom. In a nuanced case that hinges on the Antioch teen’s state of mind, legal experts say pretrial rulings regarding what jurors can — and cannot — hear will set a tone for the proceedings in a legally justifiable way the public may struggle to understand.
“I’ve never seen a case that’s so complicated to try to disentangle the motives and countermotives of all of the players in the street,” said Dr. Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted on more than 50 murder cases. “I think that this is a very unpredictable case, and that’s partly why the judge’s decisions are
