(Reuters) – The judge in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse dismissed a juror on Thursday because he told a joke about the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man whose shooting by a police officer had sparked protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin at the heart of the trial.
“The public needs to be confident that this is a fair trial,” Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder told the juror, a white man who declined to repeat the joke he told to a sheriff’s deputy outside the courtroom earlier in the week.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
