MILWAUKEE— While no jury member in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial had stepped forward as of Friday night to give insight into their thought process that lead them to acquit Kyle Rittenhouse on all the felony charges against him, some legal experts anticipated at least the trial's outcome days ago.
"To be completely honest, this verdict did not come as a surprise," John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Public Defender Project said. "I had thought from the beginning that the prosecution was going to have a very difficult time convincing the jury that Mr. Rittenhouse was not entitled to use self-defense and the prosecution had the obligation to essentially disprove that he was acting in self-defense."
Throughout the twists and turns of the trial, Gross added that one moment of testimony might have swayed the jury most in Rittenhouse's favor.
"I think one of the biggest moments was actually Mr. Grosskreutz's testimony," Gross added. "When he, as a prosecution witness, admitted on cross-examination that he'd pointed his gun at Mr. Rittenhouse and then Mr. Rittenhouse fired at him— for the prosecution to defeat this claim of self-defense and yet to have one of the people who was shot admitting on the stand that before he was shot he pointed his gun at Mr. Rittenhouse, it was hard to see a path to conviction for the prosecution once that testimony was heard."
You can watch the full interview above.