president is four criminal trials. look at the case tomorrow with it a job. they know jury has ever had before deciding whether or not to convict a former president united states and current candidate for the office again, of as many as 34 felonies today was the final chance for both sides to persuade them. we re talking about it tonight, joining the panel, retired new york city criminal judge george grosso, and jury consultant to alan. alan tuerkheimer. just grosso. it is great to have you with all your experience here what did you make up closing arguments night, i mean five hours two-and-a-half, three hours. is that it was a long day for the most part. i found it i was totally zoned in that one pretty pretty quick. i felt towards the last hour, so that mr. steinglass couldn t move to the long and i didn t know if we needed like six book excerpts more choice choice xors. i think less for the been a little more with some of that, but i think i think look, on the defense
and they talked about the debate internally that they had. because obviously, it s not what you would think anybody would do to put the defendant on the stand. they talked about their thinking. here s what he said today. at certain points, we wondered whether we would put him on. um, we did we had a mock jury. um, and we did two different juries. one, with him testifying. one, without him testifying. it was substantially better when he testified. i mean, to a marked degree. and that sealed it. interesting, elie, a lot to take away from that. one, that they that they saw such a difference. two, what would have happened if he hadn t testified you think? and three, they had a lot of resources to do things like that. to to mock it up and run it by different juries. yeah, so the decision to put your client on the stand is one of the most serious, consequential decisions any
acknowledging that this was a tragic situation where people lost their lives, they re actually glorifying the vigilanteism that kyle rittenhouse engaged in on that night. yeah. i m sure you heard the lead defense attorney who addressed the decision yesterday to put kyle rittenhouse, in fact, on the stand. here s what he said about it. had to put him on. it wasn t a close call. at certain points, we wondered whether we would put him on. we did we had a mock jury, and we did two different juries, one with him testifying, one without him testifying. it was substantially better when he testified. i mean, to a marked degree. hang on. a mock jury guided that decision? is that a normal practice? i mean, overall, what was the impact of kyle rittenhouse s presence on the stand and on the jury and ultimately on the outcome of this trial?
it goes. what is your point of view on the fact there was a crew? does it speak to perhaps the confidence level that rittenhouse and his defense team had in reaching a decision that was favorable to them? i think they just wanted to cover all their bases and do everything possible and turn over every stone. you heard mark richards yesterday, he said they had an exercise where they had rittenhouse appear in front of a mock jury and one heard from him and the other didn t and rittenhouse did better with the group that heard from him. so they decided to put him on the stand and personify him. everything they did leading up to it is what good trial lawyers do, they don t leave anything to chance and they try to take charge of the situation and put everything in place that s going to give them the best chance of, in this case, an acquittal. alan, let me ask you a little more about the preparedness, the studying the jury, doing these
work that went into it. we did a mock jury, and the mock jury were the 12 people denied to hear kyle s story. he scored much worse than the people who did hear his story. and that was subject to cross examination by a trained ex-prosecutor. and that made the decision i don t want to say easy, but it made it the right call. and in wisconsin when you have to put yourself in the feet or the shoes of that person, he needs to tell his story. and we felt strongly about that from the beginning from the first time i met kyle rittenhouse when he was in custody in the mchenry county detention center. i talked to him about that, and he was willing to do that and wanted to. does he wish he hadn t gone that night? does he think he did anything wrong? 100 times over. i ve had talks kyle said, if i had to do it all over again