Attorneys for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who fatally shot two people during a protest in Wisconsin last year, are trying to get the misdemeanor charge for possession of a deadly weapon dismissed by invoking hunting laws.
Rittenhouse’s murder trial begins in less than a month. On Tuesday, his attorneys tried to get the misdemeanor charge dismissed. They cited a Wisconsin hunting statute that allowed the teen to carry an assault rifle on the night he traveled from Illinois to Kenosha where he fatally shot two people and injured a third, NBC News reports.
“There appears to be an exception for 17-year-olds,” defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said, per the Chicago Tribune.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger encouraged the defense to tell a jury that Rittenhouse was hunting on the night he shot two Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
“They can submit evidence that the defendant had a certificate to hunt and he was engaged in legal hunting on the streets of Kenosha that night,” Binger said, according to the newspaper.
As previously reported by theGrio, the teenager from Antioch, Illinois traveled across state lines, armed with what has been described as a “long gun,” purportedly to help support law enforcement and protect public property amid protests over Jacob Blake. Blake was an unarmed Black man who was shot in the back by police.
Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree murder for the deaths of two men during the protest. Despite the allegations against him, a Christian crowdfunding website hosted a fundraising campaign that raised almost $500K for Rittenhouse.
Several other popular crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and Fundly opted to deactivate campaigns attempting to raise money for the teen following his arrest last August, according to Newsweek.
Rittenhouse’s legal team claims he shot two individuals in self-defense as they were trying to disarm him. Witnesses have alleged that he was stalking the city and threatening people with his weapon.
As reported by The Associated Press, prosecutors say they have infrared video from an FBI surveillance plane that shows Rittenhouse followed and confronted the first man he shot.
A judge ruled last month that prosecutors can’t argue that Rittenhouse is affiliated with the Proud Boys or that he attacked a woman months before the shootings, bolstering his position as he prepares for a politically charged trial.
Rittenhouse shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, Anthony Huber, 26, and Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, killing Rosenbaum and Huber and wounding Grosskreutz. Conservatives across the country have rallied around Rittenhouse, raising $2M to cover his bail. Black Lives Matter supporters have painted him as a trigger-happy racist.
Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder refused to dismiss the misdemeanor weapons charge on Tuesday, stating that a review of the state statutes was necessary, according to the report.
“I don’t feel comfortable making a ruling,” he said. “The basic concept is the rule … has to be clear to ordinary people.”
Jury selection is set to begin Nov. 1 and the trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
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