Wyoming Responds: Should Kyle Rittenhouse Be Found Guilty or Not Guilty?

On Tuesday, November 16 the jury in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse broke for deliberation to decide whether the 18-year-old Illinois resident would be found guilty or innocent of multiple charges, stemming from a confrontation that took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25, 2020, amid civil unrest after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

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During the confrontation, Rittenhouse (who was 17 years old at the time) was armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic weapon, which he used to shoot three people, killing two of them and injuring a third.

Throughout the previous weeks, both prosecutors and defense attorneys pled their cases, with Rittenhouse maintaining that he was acting strictly in self-defense.

Rittenhouse faces multiple charges, brought forth by the prosecution:

• First-Degree Reckless Homicide, Use of a Dangerous Weapon
• First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety, Use of a Dangerous Weapon
• First-Degree Recklessly Endangering Safety, Use of a Dangerous Weapon
• First-Degree Intentional Homicide, Use of a Dangerous Weapon
• Attempted First-Degree Intentional Homicide, Use of a Dangerous Weapon
• Possession of a Dangerous Weapon By A Person Under 18
• Failure to Comply with an Emergency Order from State or Local Government

In summation, Rittenhouse faces one count of First-Degree Reckless Homicide, two counts of First-Degree Reckless Endangerment, one count of First-Degree Intentional Homicide, one count of Attempted First-Degree Homicide, and one count of Failure to Comply.

Judge Bruce Schroeder dropped the Possession charge, due to a legal loophole that stated, according to the Associated Press, that "the ban on minors possessing dangerous weapons applies to minors armed with rifles or shotguns only if those weapons are short-barreled."

Rittenhouse's gun was not short-barreled.

AP noted that Judge Schroeder also dropped the Failure to Comply charge, stating tht the prosecution didn't offer enough evidence to prove it, despite video footage and Rittenhouse's own admittance.

Today, Judge Schroeder also allowed Rittenhouse to draw the numbers of the jurors who would determine his guilt or innocence.

NBC5 in Chicago reported that "At the direction of the judge, Rittenhouse's attorney placed slips of paper into a raffle drum with the numbers of each of the 18 jurors on it who sat through the two-week trial. The drum had been sitting on a window ledge throughout the trial but was placed in front of Rittenhouse at the defense table Tuesday."

The jury began deliberating at 8:15 A.M. this morning, and NPR stated that the jury broke for the night and will resume in the morning.

In the meantime, K2 Radio News took this story to the court of public opinion and allowed our readers to voice their thoughts on the guilt or innocence of Rittenhouse. We asked if he should be found Guilty or Not Guilty and our readers responded in kind (though some comments were not, actually, kind).

More than 545 comments were offered, and sometimes things got heated. This is a subject that people are clearly passionate about, and the majority seemed to believe that Rittenhouse should be found Not Guilty. You can visit our Facebook Page to read all of the comments, but we wanted to highlight some of them below. To respect the privacy of those who commented, we blacked out their names in the images, but to read the full discussion you can visit the Facebook post itself.

This is how Wyoming Responds to the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.