Judge Schroeder looks like he needs a shot of Pepto—quick. The Rittenhouse trial is spiraling out of control after the prosecution snuck some last-minute “evidence” onto the record that they claim is high-quality drone footage while only providing the defense with a lower-quality compressed version. The defense entered a motion for mistrial based on the discrepancy that provided them with different evidence than the prosecution had. You can read the details on that here.
Now that the jury is requesting access to this footage during deliberation, the lawyers are in a tizzy because the motion for mistrial is attached to the very footage the jury wants to pore over. The judge appears to be very hesitant to declare a mistrial even though he’s had several opportunities to because of the prosecutorial misconduct by DA Thomas Binger that has continuously been a problem in this trial.
Judge Schroeder has yelled at Binger multiple times for his constitutional violations of Fifth Amendment protections and other egregious prejudicial conduct. What Schroeder should do is declare a mistrial based on the multitude of prosecutorial screw-ups that have happened, especially this new video caper (or #compressiongate) mess. Instead, Schroeder decided that there will be a special hearing calling expert technical witnesses and testimony under oath. For real.
Now the prosecution is going to have to testify on the record and under oath how the drone footage file magically changed file names and compressed itself into a blurry rendition of itself for the defense but remained in perfect pixelation for the prosecution.
While declaring that there would be a new hearing on this issue, Judge Schroeder said he felt “queasy.” Us too, your honor. Us too.
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