EmpireactorJussie Smollettlikely wouldn’t have gone to prison even if he’d been found guilty as initially charged of staging a hate attack on himself, Chicago’s top prosecutor said Wednesday after thosecharges were dropped.
“If we can get to the same outcomes, if we get to the same measures of justice without going through the court process, we do that,” said Foxx.
On Tuesday, after the announcement that the charges were dropped, Smollett’s attorney stressed that the actor’s forfeiture of the bond and volunteer work since his February arrest does not indicate he had a “deal” with prosecutors. “There is no ‘deal,'” said attorney Patricia Brown Holmes. “The state dismissed the charges.”
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Smollett’s community service work included 16 hours he donated over two days to Chicago’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, theSun-Timesreports.
The announcement that the charges were droppedbrought swift condemnationfrom Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who called it “an unbelievable whitewash of justice.”
On Thursday, President Trump said in a tweet that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice would review what he called “the outrageous Jussie Smollett case,” adding, “It is an embarrassment to our Nation!”
Said Foxx: “I understand why people are emotionally attached to what happened in this case. I don’t diminish that, at all.”
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But the prosecutor, who left the case in the hands of a colleague after recusing herself because she’d had contact with one of Smollett’s relatives, said Smollett received no special treatment.
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The disorderly conduct charge is a class 4 felony that carried a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
“For people who do this work every day, who recognize what the charges are — this is a Class 4 felony — we recognize that the likelihood that someone would get a prison sentence for a Class 4 felony is slim,” Foxx said in a separate interview withChicago radio station WBEZ.
“Not every case that goes to trial has a finding of guilt,” she told the radio station. “And so the assumption, the presumption that if we had taken this case to trial that he would have been found guilty and therefore the justice would have been served — what happens to those who are found not guilty?”
“In this instance, Mr. Smollett forfeited his $10,000 bond,” she said. “Mr. Smollett completed community service, and how he chooses to spin why he did those things — what I can tell you is that most people who come through the criminal justice system don’t give up $10,000 of their hard-earned money or engage in volunteer services connected with an alleged offense without viewing that as a way of being held accountable.”
source: people.com
