A juror in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial was dismissed on Thursday after telling a sheriff’s deputy a joke about the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
According to NBC News, the prosecution asked Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder to dismiss Juror number 7 after learning about comments he made to a court security officer about the number of times a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake on Aug. 23, 2020.
Blake was shot seven times, he survived but is paralyzed from the waist down.
The Daily Beast reports that prosecutors say the joke was something roughly similar to: Why did it take them seven shots to kill Jacob Blake? Because the Kenosha Police only had seven bullets.
Judge Schroeder called the juror to the courtroom on Thursday before the beginning of the third day of trial to ask about the comment.
The juror acknowledged that he had made the comment, but declined to repeat it.
“My feeling is, it was nothing to do with the case. It wasn’t anything to do with Kyle and his seven charges,” the juror said.
Nonetheless, Schroeder dismissed the juror, saying “it was really bad judgment to tell a joke of that nature.” He said the public needs to be confident the trial is fair.
The trial will proceed with a 19-person jury panel with only one person on color.
