The Rittenhouse Trial Could Never Have Been What Americans Wanted
Updated at 12:54 p.m. ET on November 20, 2021.
A jury has found Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot three men during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020, not guilty of the charges against him. Jurors deliberated for more than three days before delivering the verdict this afternoon, accepting his attorneys’ argument that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
The trial was inevitably a media circus, spurring intense criticism of the judge and prosecutors from commentators across the political spectrum. Much of that attention offered little insight, and sidestepped the point. The predicament of the Rittenhouse trial was that it could never do what many Americans, especially on the left, wanted. It couldn’t produce a plain answer as to . It couldn’t say something about the state of
