One thing every good trial attorney knows, having either learned early or later, is to never try to fool a jury. Strategy is important in what you do or do not present the jury, or what you argue to the jury, but you will never get away with trying to fool twelve common sense people. It just doesn’t happen.

Fox (of all stations) had former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Moore on Fox News Sunday to talk about the Rittenhouse case and Moore lit Rittenhouse up for… trying to fool the jury. The words apply with equal strength to Rittenhouse’s attorneys:

I think when you start talking about whether he was hit with a skateboard and that type of thing by one of the victims, that becomes a little bit more unbelievable, given that he had no injuries.

He had a very scripted examination. You know, that’s tougher to believe too. And I don’t think it’s going to be lost on this jury that there weren’t a lot of real — what appeared to be at least — tears coming out of a performance on the stand.

“Scripted.” Trying to fool the jury. Those were not Rittenhouse’s answers. They were answers sculpted to fit the law. They were not sincere, something a jury will pick up. That one is on the lawyers. The performance on the stand… both Rittenhouse and the lawyers.

“You’ve got a guy who shouldn’t have had an AR-15 walking through a crowded area, he shouldn’t have been, in shooting people.

“His responses to me sounded much, much too scripted because his answers were trying to fit the law as opposed to telling his own story about what he was really feeling.

“Scripted.” Fit the law.

And I thought that his emotional outburst seemed to be fake. It’s hard to have a big emotional outburst and then jump right back into telling the law.

And twelve common sense people can tell when someone is trying to pull it off. But then Moore got down to what will likely be the most important part of the trial, whether the jury will convict Rittenhouse, the jury instructions on lesser included offenses:

 “I think it’s likely to be a guilty verdict at least on some of the counts. I think the charge where Rittenhouse says he was being hit with the skateboard, I think that’s likely a conviction.”

Well, we will see. So far, many civil rights advocates have legitimately questioned the judge’s impartiality. Judges can do a lot to shape a case by picking and choosing which instructions the jury will hear.

But it is good to hear that someone else believes that Rittenhouse is full of sh*t and that the jury will see through a lot of his testimony. Do not try to “fool” juries. Shade your story to your advantage, do not ever try to “fool” them. You never win.

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Jason Miciak Substack: Much Ado About Nothing

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