Rittenhouse. Acquitted, Convicted? What if it's neither? [View all]

[MineralMan]

I would not be surprised at all if the jury hung on all of the charges. It just takes one juror to hang a jury, and how would it be surprising if there were more than one who refused to go along with the general feelings of the jury?

I was the foreman of a jury that ended up hung. No matter what the jury said in discussions, there were three jurors who were so struck by the color of the defendant's skin that they voted Guilty every last time the jury held a vote. Nine voted to acquit on all of those votes, but those three were dead set on convicting the defendant.

It didn't matter how many times we went over the jury instructions. It didn't matter that what was charged was not met by the evidence. The defendant was a Black man, and that was all those three cared about.

We got sent back into chambers three times by the judge to continue our deliberations, but it still ended as a hung jury.

In the end, the prosecutor never retried the case and the defendant ended up not going to prison after all, but the latent racism of three jurors caused the jury to be hung.

I would not be surprised if there is a hung jury in the Rittenhouse case. Not surprised at all.