CHICAGO (AP) — The judge in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial, already the subject of scrutiny for various actions in the case, drew attention again on Monday for…
CHICAGO (AP) — The judge in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial, already the subject of scrutiny for various actions in the case, drew attention again on Monday for his handling of jury instructions. Judge Bruce Schroeder, who had been expected to file final instructions on Sunday, took arguments from attorneys until the last minute Monday as he edited the instructions on the bench. Then he sent the jury out midway through to talk with attorneys about making them clearer. The last-minute activity focused on a crucial procedure — developing instructions about how jurors should determine whether Rittenhouse is guilty of each charge against him. On Monday, just hours before jurors got the case, Schroeder dismissed a charge of being a minor in possession of a firearm. Instructions are always closely scrutinized by attorneys and judges. In a case complicated by multiple charges, victims and Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim, the document’s importance is clear. Schroeder, Rittenhouse’s attorneys and prosecutors spent all day Friday discussing the directions, continued written communication over the weekend and still had protests and worries to hash out Monday morning before the 36 pages were ready for Schroeder to read aloud to jurors. At one point, Schroeder bemoaned the dense instructions: “I just, I feel terrible about giving this kind of stuff,” he said outside the jurors’ presence. Prosecutors repeatedly asked Schroeder not to veer far from the model instructions and disagreed with the judge’s preferred wording for some procedures. At one point, prosecutor Thomas Binger told Schroeder: “That’s not the law.” Legal experts have for decades debated how to make instructions more understandable to jurors, unfamiliar with the archaic and confusing terms in statutes and criminal codes.
