KENOSHA (Wis.) – On Tuesday, jurors will start deliberating in the Wisconsin murder case against Kyle Rittenhouse. They will weigh the argument that he killed three people without justification in protests and the defense’s claim that he acted self-defense.

Rittenhouse (18) is accused of killing Joseph Rosenbaum (36), and Anthony Huber (26), and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz (28), on August 25, 2020. Following the shootings of Jacob Blake (Black man), Rittenhouse was charged with shooting him and Gaige Grosskreutz in Kenosha. Blake had been paralysed at the waist.

A trial judge stated that the jury would commence deliberations Tuesday morning after court opened at 9 AM (1500 GMT).

Rittenhouse has pleaded guilty but did not testify last week, arguing that he fired the weapon only when the men assaulted him. Rosenbaum, he claimed, was the first to be shot at that evening.

Monday saw the closing arguments by defense counsel and prosecutors. Their portrayals of defendants were very different.

Rittenhouse, according to the Prosecutors, was a dangerous vigilante that provoked violent encounters. He first raised his gun in a threatening manner and then shot Rosenbaum. This created an “active shooter” situation, which other tried to prevent.

Defense claimed Rittenhouse was only trying to save a dealership of used cars from property damage that Kenosha witnessed in just two nights before the shooting.

Since George Zimmerman’s 2013 death in shooting Trayvon Martin (an unarmed Black teenager) in 2013, the shootings remain the most closely followed case regarding a civil’s right of self-defense.

Rittenhouse, like Zimmerman has been polarizing. Rittenhouse is seen as heroic by conservatives who support expansive gun rights, and as an emblem of reckless American gun culture, by many left-leaning people.