Margaret Russell spoke to Associated Press about how a dismissal of a juror in the Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial shows the risk of bias in big cases. The juror dismissed from Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial joked to a court security officer about a police officer’s shooting of Jacob Blake, the event that set off the protests where Rittenhouse shot three people, two fatally. The jury selection process for the case took one day.
Margaret Russell, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-founder of the Equal Justice Society, agreed (about the one-day jury selection), saying the jury selection “seems astonishingly quick” for a case that involves some of the most “contentious, inflammatory issues of our day.”
Russell said she also believed Judge Bruce Schroeder was correct to dismiss the juror Thursday, saying his actions show “a shockingly ignorant sense of the case and the issues involved.” The fact that the man didn’t want to repeat his joke in open court suggests he knew it was inappropriate, she said.
