Very possible. I’m a career prosecutor and there is a line of case law out the door that says that you can’t do things like this to the jury. You just can’t stand in front of them and say, for instance, “Imagine how the victim felt when a man came up to her (prosecutor steps right up to the bar, screaming in the juror’s faces) and screamed ‘Give me your money.'”
I can’t believe these prosecutors did what they did. I know lots of judges here who would have thrown their asses straight out the door for some of the stuff they pulled.

Very true. The Antifa are the shock troops that smash widows, set fires, cut locks, tea down fences , etc. They create the openings for the looters and foment a sense of anarchy among the crowd. In many cases the Antifa fade away after the looting begins. Many average citizen protestors get caught in the crossfire. When they experience crowd dispersing tactics, it’s no fun. But, since the DAs in these blue run cities don’t prosecute the protestors, it’s all an invitation to do it again and again.

It seems that there are three basic types at these protests. A small group o Antifa, a much larger group of outraged average citizens, and the even larger group of looters. Each group has their motivations. The Antifa are motivated by the chance for unchecked violence, The average citizens ae motivated by political ideology. The looters by greed. Disparate groups that serve one another’s needs.

https://babylonbee.com/news/doh-here-are-8-critical-errors-made-by-the-rittenhouse-prosecutors

https://babylonbee.com/news/op-ed-we-dont-need-due-process-for-people-we-know-are-guilty

https://babylonbee.com/news/every-man-in-america-except-kyle-rittenhouse-found-guilty-of-not-showing-up-to-kenosha-to-defend-their-fellow-americans
Oddly, a few of the commenters on Branca’s posts have made similar observations: he was out doing what every citizen of Kenosha should have done, in light of the dereliction of the mayor and police in not providing security to the town.

Here’s a case involving a “rogue juror” who brought “information pamphlets” in to the others. The judge didn’t declare a mistrial, for practical reasons, but that didn’t change the fact that what she did was expressly forbidden.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/18/latest_opioid_trial_augurs_reversals_most_frequent_804088.html

That’s one of the topics Frei andBarnes discuss at some length.

Jump Kick Man was known to the prosecution, and also inoculated against witnessing by manipulating charges against him.
He seems at least sociopathic.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/rittenhouse-mistrial-motion-looms-as-jurors-appear-deadlocked/

Prosecutors did not comply with their obligation to give the defense a copy of what they’d received. Instead, they provided what they represented as a copy but was actually a file of significantly poorer quality — only one-sixteenth the resolution. This apparently went unnoticed until the very end of presentation of evidence. At the end of the prosecution’s rebuttal case, after Rittenhouse had testified and the defense had rested, prosecutors introduced the drone footage and, in particular, two enhanced images said to be drawn from it — although the relevant witness (James Armstrong, a crime-lab expert) could not testify that he had compared the enhanced version to the original to ensure that it was fair and accurate.

From these photos, the prosecutors have, in essence, testified that Rittenhouse was the aggressor in the first shooting. Understand: There is no fact witness to the state’s version of events. Prosecutors could have called Joshua or Kelly Ziminsky to attest to these claims. Indeed, Joshua would seem to be a central witness, having fired an apparently stolen gun in the air while he and Rosenbaum were chasing Rittenhouse, which clearly increased the latter’s perception that he was under potentially lethal attack. The prosecutors, however, conveniently charged Joshua Ziminsky with crimes, including arson and obstructing police, so they could insist that his Fifth Amendment privilege rendered him unavailable as a witness.

That is nonsense, of course: They could have given Joshua immunity, which would have made him an available witness. They could also have called Kelly Ziminsky to testify, since they dropped the misdemeanor rioting charges against her. They did neither. The only fact witness is Rittenhouse, who plausibly says he was attacked.

Instead of calling a fact witness who could rebut Rittenhouse, prosecutors produced blurry enhanced photographs from which they themselves, the prosecutors who are not witnesses, claim that they detect Rittenhouse pointing his rifle at Joshua Ziminsky.

This “provocation” theory is flawed: the claim that Rittenhouse’s supposed gun-pointing at Ziminsky provoked not Ziminsky but Rosenbaum, such that Rittenhouse no longer had a legally valid basis to act in self-defense when Rosenbaum rushed him. There is simply no testimonial evidence of this assertion. But put that legal defect aside. The prosecutors are giving their own testimonial spin on disputed photographic evidence. Even more significant, it is video evidence that they failed to disclose to the defense.

There is no doubt about that. The only question is whether they sandbagged defense counsel on purpose or through good-faith error. That may matter for disciplinary purposes down the road; but in the here and now, the only pressing question is whether the defendant was denied due process.

He clearly was. The Rittenhouse defense did not receive a copy of the evidence on which the prosecutors relied. They were given a drastically inferior version. At the last moment, then, prosecutors introduced enhancements from that superior evidence they’d hoarded. Over defense objections, and with explicit misgivings, Judge Schroeder allowed the evidence to be used. Moreover, he granted the state’s request for a “provocation” instruction to the jury largely based on the prosecutors’ interpretation of the disputed evidence.

And now, it has become increasingly obvious that the jury is heavily weighing these disputed images as it struggles to resolve the case. The great weight of the evidence favors Rittenhouse’s claim that he fired in self-defense; pushing against that is the prosecutors’ insistence — unsupported by any testimony, derived from their dubious interpretation of evidence that should have been excluded — that Rittenhouse provoked Ziminsky . . . which somehow provoked Rosenbaum . . . which caused a chain of events in which Rittenhouse somehow forfeited his right to defend himself.

There should not be a conviction in this case. If there is, I expect it to be thrown out. If there is a hung jury, Judge Schroeder would be on firm footing if he did not permit Kyle Rittenhouse to be retried.

The specifically violent ones throwing the bricks and Molotovs and beating up passersby are not “ordinary citizens who support progressive causes”, true. But many of the ones who fill out the crowd numbers, who the thugs hide behind when they throw, are such. Many friends and acquaintances of mine in Seattle went to the CHOP, went to the “protests”, and were the ones spouting “outrage! how could they!” when the police declared a riot (because it was) and deployed tear gas. They thought they were just being part of a movement, doing their part for justice, for some kind of inchoate “revolution”. The kind of misguided but generally well-meaning people who would be first against the wall if their precious “revolution” ever actually happened.

Aesopfan beat me to it with her description of Antifa’s recruiting practices. It’s become clear to me from reading about the Antifa perps in Seattle ad Portland that these are not ordinary citizens who support progressive causes. They’re by and large sociopaths/psychopaths who are attracted to violence. Antifa gives them permission to destroy things and think they are doing something worthy. No normal person would be on the streets of Portland for 100 straight nights committing arson and smashing things up unless they enjoyed it. That’s what they did.

It began some years ago in Eugene, Oregon. It has become a nationwide group. There’s seemingly money available to fly these people to where the action is. For the most part they are well trained at destruction. They purposely don’t carry fire arms as they don’t want to give the police the motivation and justification for using their fire arms. But they carry “non-lethal” weapons like hammers, crowbars, Molotov cocktails, bricks, bats, and saws for cutting locks/fences. They have a uniform of sorts. They dress mostly in all black. They are kitted out with gloves, knee pads, elbow pads, small back packs, helmets, face shields, some body armor, and plastic shields. They can be very formidable, but their modus operandi is mostly to strike at weak points, move quickly, and get out of the way when confronted with superior force.

Not all are as disciplined as the Portland Antifa, but one thing is sure. They all love violence.