KENOSHA, Wis. — A jury in Kenosha County was seated in the homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse on Monday, an unusually swift process that was completed with a flood of questioning on a single day.
Rittenhouse, 18, faces six criminal counts including first-degree intentional homicide in the shooting deaths of two men and the wounding of another in the aftermath of protests over a police shooting here in August 2020. Opening statements are expected Tuesday morning.
A large number of prospective jurors — about 150 people — were summoned Monday to the Kenosha County Courthouse downtown, a reflection of the outsize attention the trial has attracted in a city that was torn by civil unrest and gun violence last year.
Dozens of people were dismissed throughout the day and into the early evening, until the number of jurors was winnowed down to 20, a panel made up of 11 women and nine men. Twenty jurors will hear the case, and that number will be cut to 12 to reach a verdict. Kenosha County is 75% white, and the jury was overwhelmingly white.
Judge Bruce Schroeder of Kenosha County Circuit Court, determined to select a jury rapidly, questioned potential jurors closely about their biases and their connections to the expected witnesses in the trial. When he asked if there was anyone in the pool of jurors who had not heard of the Rittenhouse case, no one raised a hand.
Schroeder, known for his loquacious and occasionally cranky courtroom manner, talked to the jury pool about their responsibility as jurors, offering commentary on judicial bias, the history of democracy and the fall of Rome.
He pushed back against comments from potential jurors who said they had read and talked too much about the trial, which has been an all-consuming topic of conversation in Kenosha for weeks. When one man began explaining that his support for the Second Amendment was so fervent that he did not believe he could serve as an impartial juror, Schroeder stopped him.
“I want this case to reflect the greatness of Kenosha and the fairness of Kenosha, and I don’t want it to get sidetracked into other issues,” Schroeder said. “I don’t care about your opinions on the Second Amendment.”
Kenosha County is nearly split politically, voting for former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then flipping to narrow victories for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.