Rittenhouse Attorney Defends Client’s Tears on Stand, Says He’s Getting Treatment for PTSD and ‘Doesn’t Sleep at Night’

Mark Richards, one of the defense attorneys for Kyle Rittenhouse, spoke to reporters after his client was found not guilty in his murder trial, defending his tearful testimony and describing Rittenhouse as being in counseling for PTSD and unable to sleep.

Rittenhouse, 18, was on trial for shooting three men, two of them fatally, during the August 2020 protests in Kenosha, WI over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. As the jury foreperson read the not guilty verdicts, Rittenhouse was seen on television cameras breaking down in tears and finally collapsing as the fifth and final acquittal was read.

Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys had argued that he acted in self defense, and he took the stand to tell his side of the story. As he described the events that evening that led him to pull the trigger, he hyperventilated and broke down in tears and the judge called a brief recess.

A number of cable news commentators questioned Rittenhouse’s sincerity, with LeBron James going so far as to accuse him of faking his tears, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Twitter account trolling him in a post about “crocodile tears.”

Richards held a press conference outside the Kenosha courthouse after the verdict, and a reporter asked him whether Rittenhouse was “remorseful” or felt bad for the families of the victims.

The attorney replied that they had “talked about it” and he believed that Rittenhouse did feel remorse.

Richards then pivoted to the issue of Rittenhouse’s emotional testimony.

“There has been so much talk about whether the tears were genuine,” said Richards. “All I can say is when we prepared Kyle, and we worked on this testimony, there were things we couldn’t talk about in my office because it got too emotional and he couldn’t handle it.”

Rittenhouse was “in counseling for PTSD” and “doesn’t sleep at night,” he added.

Another reported asked Richards, “along those lines, where does he go from here?”

Rittenhouse “has to get on with his life the best he can,” said Richards, but he didn’t think he would continue to live in the area (Rittenhouse’s residence of Antioch, IL is about a half an hour’s drive from Kenosha) because it was “too dangerous,” noting the “24 hour security” his client had had since the shootings.

It was “scary” how many death threats had been made to everyone in the case, including the prosecutors and defense attorneys, said Richards, mentioning how he had just stopped answering his phone after his third death threat.

Watch the video above, via CNN.