Rittenhouse lawyers’ trial playbook: Don’t ‘crusade,’ defend

An attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse said after his client’s acquittal that he was determined to steer away from the most polarizing parts of the case.

Mark Richards said he told Rittenhouse the first time he met him that if he wanted a crusader, then Richards wasn’t his man.

That was a sharp contrast to Rittenhouse’s first attorneys, who leaned hard into Rittenhouse’s portrayal as a potent symbol of American divides on gun issues and racial injustice.

Richards and co-counsel Corey Chirafisi said little about the case before trial and tried to focus jurors on the critical three minutes of the shootings to argue self-defense.