Who is the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial?
Judge Bruce Schroeder also presided over Mark Jensen trial in 2008
Judge Bruce Schroeder also presided over Mark Jensen trial in 2008
Judge Bruce Schroeder also presided over Mark Jensen trial in 2008
The trial for Kyle Rittenhouse will begin in less than one week, and the judge presiding over it has made nationwide headlines before.
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Rittenhouse claimed he shot three men in self-defense in August 2020, killing two of them during unrest in Kenosha following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Kenosha County Judge Bruce Schroeder has presided over a courtroom for nearly 40 years,
but Monday, will likely mark his highest-profile case yet when the country tunes in for the Rittenhouse trial.
Both sides have been battling over which evidence to use for months.
"Do you have another point you wanna make? Go on to you next point," Schroeder said during a hearing.
There are some things he won't waiver on, such as using the word victim.
"This is a long-held opinion of mine, which very few judges, I guess, share with me. I think the word victim is a loaded, loaded word," Schroeder said.
Schroeder's no-nonsense reputation is well known among criminal defense attorneys.
"He's not intimidated by the spectacle and the media involvement in this case or the high stakes. He's essentially denied almost every pre-trial motion by both sides and really focusing the parties on what happened the night of the shootings," criminal defense attorney Dan Adams said.
Before the attention of Rittenhouse, the honorable 75-year-old made headlines in the 2008 Mark Jensen homicide trial.
Schroeder sentenced Jensen to life in prison after a found him guilty of poisoning his wife with anti-freeze.
A conviction that would later be overturned, in part, because of a letter Schroeder allowed to be used as evidence.
The letter said if anything happened to her, her husband should be the first suspect.
The case came up during Rittenhouse's final evidence hearing Tuesday.
"I had a murder case about 20 years ago. Perhaps you've heard of it: state against Mark Jensen. I made evidentiary ruling here and DA appealed it, and it went to the Supreme Court, and it's going to trial again next April 20, years later, because the Supreme Court reversed my evidentiary decision, and they've been told now at the federal court that they were wrong in doing that, the original ruling was a correct one," Schroeder said.
The evidence is expected to play a critical role in the Rittenhouse case as well.
He faces a life sentence if convicted.