[Fido969]

Mark Richards did a spectacular job. His job was to defend Kyle, and during the trial I was frustrated by what I thought was passiveness. But the jury brought back the best verdict, even with difficult circumstances.

Richards might be a bit of a liberal, but, gosh, I’d want him defending me.

[basalt]

i thought Richards was so-so...the other attorney was very very good....Richards closing argument was terrible...he jumped all over...kept mixing up names...at times he was almost incoherent...good thing this was such a clear case of self defense.

[Alberta's Child]

I learned a long time ago never to take a lawyer's court manners and decisions at face value. And in this particular case, I think one group of people who come out looking like they're just one step above the mainstream media in terms of lost credibility is the endless group of "armchair lawyers" posting during the course of the trial and claiming that Rittenhouse's legal team was incompetent.

The lawyers in the courtroom have the advantage of knowing who is on the jury, and how they respond to different things during the course of the trial. They also tend to know the judge a hell of a lot better than some dope weighing in on his web camera a thousand miles away.

[Repealthe17thAmendment]

The lawyers on Andrew Branca's site were less kind about Richards. According to them, he missed several opportunities to slow down the aggressive tactics of ADA Binger, and made what could have been a disasterous motion to have the judge dismiss without prejudice. If the State would have accepted this, the case would have been retried. By the way, this motion was made during deliberations!

Richards benefited from an absolute, rock solid case on the facts and evidence, yet it still took three and a half days of deliberations to get there. It's sort of like winning a game in overtime when you started out with a 20 point lead.

Of course, Rittenhouse was certainly poorly served by his previous lawyers and that's another thing that makes Richards look better.