Rittenhouse Defense Suggests Kenosha DA Colluded With Detective to Hide Cell Phone Evidence.
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Testimony on Wednesday and Thursday from the Kenosha detective in charge of the investigation into shootings by Kyle Rittenhouse left more than a few questions unanswered about what evidence is missing from the trial.
The defense wants Grosskreutz’s video from his phone that night, but the prosecutor, working with the chief investigator, Detective Martin Howard, scuttled the video in apparent contravention of typical police homicide protocol.
As PJ Media has previously reported, the Rittenhouse defense team has already brought up questions about the disappearance of high-definition video taken by an FBI surveillance aircraft the night of the riot and shootings and then somehow lost before it made its way to the defense.
During cross-examination, Rittenhouse’s attorney asked the detective about how cell phone evidence was typically handled.
A use-of-force expert, attorney Andrew Branca, wrote over at Legal Insurrection that Detective Howard “violated a number of the departments’ normal investigative practices with respect to this case, while [the defense suggests] being in unusually close and improper communication with ADA Binger himself—and, remarkably, shortly thereafter getting the plum assignment for such an inexperienced detective of being assigned the lead investigator on the Rittenhouse case.”
On Thursday morning, defense attorney Richards elicited in testimony from the detective that police had received a search warrant for Grosskreutz’s phone but never served it. When Richards asked why the detective said it was because he wasn’t “comfortable with Marcy’s Law.”
It was at this point that Richards pointed at the prosecutor and demanded of the detective, “He’s nodding at you now, isn’t he?”
That made everyone sit straight up in their seats.
The point he was making was that the detective who was only a year on the job as a detective, and ten as a street officer, and was appointed to head the biggest case in Kenosha, was taking his investigative cues from the deputy DA, keeping evidence out of the trial that might be exculpatory.