Kyle Rittenhouse's defense lawyer says former attorney Lin Wood wanted to use teen 'for a cause'
Pool / Getty Images
- Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted Friday of all charges after fatally shooting 2 people and injuring one more.
- His attorney told reporters that his previous attorneys wanted to use the teen for a "cause."
- Lawyers Lin Wood and John Pierce left the teen's team before the homicide trial began.
Kyle Rittenhouse's defense attorney Mark Richards told CNN that the teen's former attorneys were using him for "a cause" rather than simply representing a client.
Richards said he was hired by Rittenhouse's prior attorneys, Lin Wood and John Pierce.
"They wanted to use Kyle for a cause, and something that I think was inappropriate," Richards told reporters after a jury acquitted Rittenhouse of all charges in the case. "The only thing that mattered to me what whether he was found not guilty or not. I don't represent causes, I represent clients."
Richards said he told the teen when they first met that he wasn't going to fight over anything that wasn't tied to his legal defense.
"If he was looking for someone to go off on a crusade, I wasn't his lawyer," Richards said he told his client.
Wood and Pierce were Rittenhouse's first attorneys and haven't been shy about their pro-Trump politics.
The two lawyers used Rittenhouse's appeal to the far-right to fundraise the money needed for his bail, according to the Chicago Tribune.
They later asked for the funds back, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Wood left the case to unsuccessfully litigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, while Pierce was let go by the teen's family.
Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all five charges he faced Friday after fatally shooting two men, and shooting another man in the arm, at a Jacob Blake protest in Kenosha, Wisconson, in 2020.
Rittenhouse had been charged with first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment. Another misdemeanor weapons possession charge had been thrown out by the judge in the case.