Jury continues deliberations in Rittenhouse trial

The jurors in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse have concluded their second day of deliberations without reaching a verdict.

Jurors deliberated for roughly 7.5 hours on Wednesday after deliberating for roughly 8.5 hours on Tuesday.

The jury requested to review two videos in evidence on Wednesday:  

The videos were placed on a thumb drive and presented to the jurors on what the judge described as a "sanitized" laptop. Jurors viewed those videos in the jury room.

The jury was subsequently brought into the courtroom to view drone video footage that they had requested to review earlier. No one but the jury was present in the courtroom when they viewed that footage. They spent about 45 minutes inside before leaving.

The 12 juror panel is expected to resume deliberating at 10 a.m. ET Thursday.

Jurors in the case are not being sequestered during deliberations. 

Jurors deliberating the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse appeared fatigued at the end of their second day of deliberations without a verdict, according to observations from a courtroom pool reporter. 

The reporter added there "were no outward signs of tension among them at the end of their day" which started at 10 a.m. ET. 

The 12 juror panel is expected to resume deliberating at 10 a.m. ET Thursday morning.

The jury has left the courtroom, according to a pool reporter. Jurors were inside court for roughly 45 minutes viewing the videos they had requested. 

While a full list of the exhibits was not given in court, prosecutors did disclose that the request included FBI surveillance video and drone video showing the moments leading up to the fatal shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum. 

Prosecutors requested the jury view the videos in court so they could be seen on a larger screen. After hearing objections from the defense, the judge agreed to grant the request and asked for the courtroom to be cleared. 

During the break, defense attorney Mark Richards confirmed to a courtroom pool reporter that the jury has access to view the FBI surveillance video, the full drone video showing the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum, and a version of the drone video edited by the crime lab that shows the incident in various speeds.

Judge Bruce Schroeder brought the jury into the courtroom to view drone video footage that they requested to review earlier.

When he brought in the jurors, the judge informed them that the video was "all cued up" and they could "view the material as much as you like." He added that they had "complete freedom" and "privacy," and "could move in closer to the screen" if they like.

While the jury is viewing the video, the judge, attorneys, and Kyle Rittenhouse will not be in the room.

"There will be nobody in here but you twelve jurors. OK, no sitting in my chair," Schroeder to the jury.

He said that the court staff conducted a search of the room to "check that there aren't any devices that will pick anything up."

He told the jury that when they're done reviewing the video, that they can return to the jury room to continue deliberations.

More detail on the video that the jury is viewing: While a full list of the exhibits was not given in court, prosecutors did disclose that the request included FBI surveillance video and drone video showing the moments leading up to the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum. 

Prosecutors requested the jury view the videos in court so they could be seen on a larger screen. After hearing objections from the defense, the judge agreed to grant the request and asked for the courtroom to be cleared. 

During the break, defense attorney Mark Richards confirmed to a courtroom pool reporter that the jury has access to view the FBI surveillance video, the full drone video showing the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum, and a version of the drone video edited by the crime lab that shows the incident in various speeds.

Jurors weighing the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse requested to review two videos in evidence on Wednesday.  

Jurors asked to view a livestream video taken by Gaige Grosskreutz moments after Rittenhouse shot Joseph Rosenbaum. In the video, Grosskreutz jogs next to Rittenhouse and asks if he had just shot someone.

Jurors also requested the "BG on The Scene" video. It shows the second incident involving the fatal shooting of Anthony Huber, shooting of Grosskreutz and alleged reckless endangerment of an unknown male. 

Jurors also asked for a slowed down version of the video. 

Schroeder requested the videos be placed on a thumb drive and presented to the jurors on what he described as a "sanitized" laptop. Jurors will view the videos in the jury room and not in court as attorneys had discussed earlier in the day.  

After a break, an attorney returned to the courtroom with a blank laptop containing two videos. It is unclear which two videos of the three that were discussed were placed on the laptop and delivered to the jury.  

The jury will be allowed to review the videos they requested as many times as they deem necessary, the judge determined Wednesday.  

Schroeder heard arguments from attorneys citing previous cases in which restrictions were placed on how many times jurors were allowed to watch video evidence during deliberations.

“It seems to me this is a pursuit of truth and you should take the course that you think will lead you there,” the judge said, when discussing the request from the jury.

During a discussion in court this afternoon, prosecutors addressed a motion to dismiss the case by the defense, calling it "factually inaccurate."

What is this about: In a motion to dismiss the case filed earlier this week, the defense claimed that, "On November 5, 2021, the fifth day of trial on this case, the prosecution turned over to the defense footage of drone video which captured some of the incident from August 25, 2020. The problem is, the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video."

"What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state," the motion continued.

The defense claimed that the version they were given "was only 3.6 megabytes, while the state had a higher resolution version that was 11.2 megabytes."

Prosecutor James Kraus said that when they turned over the video to the defense, they were unable to provide the video via airdrop so the file was emailed as an attachment to the defense. Kraus said the video was inadvertently compressed when it was sent to the defense, possibly due to a software issue going from an Apple phone to an Android phone. He said, "we did not know that this would occur."

The prosecutor said that "we cannot be held responsible" for "something that happened in the transfer that we had no knowledge of."

"We didn't compress anything, we didn't change anything," Kraus said.

Defense attorney Natalie Wisco, however, said the video she was sent had a different file name than the original one and suggested the prosecution was not telling the truth.

Kraus said the suggestion that the prosecution would "sabotage" the video was "preposterous."

Judge Bruce Schroeder said that he would like to "get somebody to explain this." He said he planned to call in expert testimony and take testimony under oath from attorneys to get to the bottom of the episode.

While addressing a question from the jury on Wednesday, Judge Bruce Schroeder defended his practice of allowing Kyle Rittenhouse to randomly draw the numbers from a lottery tumbler of who would become the alternate jurors, prior to the start of deliberations.

“I admit that I don’t know that there’s a large number of courts that do that, maybe not any,” he said.

Eighteen jurors sat through the entirety of the two-week trial. On Tuesday morning, Rittenhouse himself selected six juror numbers out of a tumbler in a random drawing. Those six are not participating in jury deliberations.

Schroeder said he has handled alternates this way since a case in Racine about 20 years ago, when the court clerk drew the numbers and the only Black juror was removed from a case involving a Black defendant.

“Ever since that case, I've had an almost universal policy of having the defendant do the things, and that’s had nothing to do with anybody's race or anything like that, and I never had a complaint about it before,” he explained.

“I think people feel better when they have control,” said Schroeder. 

The judge also criticized media coverage of the trial and said he plans “to think long and hard” about live television of the trial next time despite being a firm believer that the public should be able to see what’s going on.

The jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial started deliberating around 10 a.m. ET this morning. They've been at the courthouse now for a little over three and a half hours.

This is the second day the jury — made up of five men and seven women — has deliberated. They were dismissed yesterday after more than eight hours: Deliberations started at 10:15 a.m. ET Tuesday, and Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed the jurors for the evening at 6:50 p.m. ET. The court did not specify how long the jurors took for their lunch break.

The jurors are considering five felony charges against Rittenhouse, the teenager who killed two people and shot another during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer.

Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder has received two more questions from jurors, according to a pool reporter in court. It is unclear if the questions are procedural in nature. 

The judge has left the bench and gone back into his chambers.

The attorneys are currently in the courtroom and setting up monitors, according to the pool reporter.