Personally, I firmly believe the jury should unanimously find Rittenhouse not guilty of ALL charges, released and left alone to get on with the rest of his life a free man, ...BUT... unfortunately, what I'm expecting to more likely really happen is this:
...Jury deliberations began on Tuesday morning in the trial of Mr. Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he came to Kenosha with a semiautomatic rifle amid unrest over a police shooting and fired eight shots, killing two men and wounding a third. The five charges he faces include first-degree intentional homicide, which is called first-degree murder in other states and is among the most serious charges on the books in Wisconsin. If convicted of that charge, he could face life in prison. Beyond those five counts, Judge Bruce Schroeder on Monday told jurors to weigh some less serious charges. That could prove significant, legal experts say, because the lesser charges offer jurors a path to compromise if they disagree on the most serious offenses. For example, on the charge of first-degree intentional homicide, the judge told jurors that they also had the option of finding the defendant guilty of second-degree intentional homicide or first-degree reckless homicide.
“The lesser charge implicitly invites a compromise among the jurors,” said Michael O’Hear, a professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, who said requests for juries to consider charges less serious than the ones a defendant originally faced were common.
James Kraus, a prosecutor in Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial, told reporters that his request to allow jurors to consider lighter charges on several counts was standard rather than an admission of weakness in the case.
The judge’s instruction on lighter charges was seen as a win for the prosecution.But in a victory for the defense, the judge on Monday dismissed a sixth charge against Mr. Rittenhouse. It was the least serious, a misdemeanor charge of illegally possessing a dangerous weapon as a minor. ...
