Jussie Smollett’s Original Black Prosecutor Calls Trial & Sentence ‘Mob Justice’

White prosecutors are determined to short-circuit criminal justice reforms

Kim Foxx is the first black person elected as Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney. As such, her office was tasked with prosecuting the now concluded Jussie Smollett case. Foxx made local and national headlines because she dropped the initial sixteen counts against the ‘Empire’ star’s misdemeanor crime of falsely making a police report. He and she agreed that he would relinquish the $10,000 in bail money which he had previously posted, and do “community service” at the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-PUSH Coalition headquarters here in Chicago.

The white high honchos and most white “rank and file” officers of the Chicago Police Department’s heads exploded…as did any number of “mainline,” “old school,” and white Cook County prosecutors, and not a few Cook County judges.

Foxx was elected principally by black Chicagoans because the “traditional” white leadership of both the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and the CPD have a long and sordid history of abusing their power by railroading black and brown people, especially black men, into the penitentiary on flimsy or contrived “evidence” ….and often for crimes which when committed by white defendants, are “punished” only with varying degrees of wrist slaps.

The broad outlines of this case are well known, and so I will only lightly plumb the dirty details.

On a predawn, below-freezing, January morn in 2019, Jussie Smollett claimed that he had been attacked by two white male Trump supporters as he emerged from a sandwich shop in the heart of a tony downtown Chicago enclave. Those Trumpers, he said, beat him mercilessly and placed a makeshift noose around his neck–all the while shouting and yelling homophobic and racist slurs, and declaring that, “This is MAGA country!”

Smollett’s claims drew intense media coverage and public scrutiny because of his “high profile” notoriety as a TV star; the immediacy and “viral” nature of social media; the despicable nature of the claimed crime itself; and the emerging heightened awareness of documented similarly race-based crimes (including police abuse of black males). These events occurred before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In any event, protests against police abuse of black people had become a regular feature of YouTube videos and the “nightly news.” It did not help that these incidents were constantly being incited and not-so-tacitly encouraged, by the openly racist rhetoric emanating from the then President of the United States himself.

All of these “factors” coalesced and combined to sensationalize and crystalize Smollett’s claims to the point that a national media feeding frenzy ensued and threatened to precipitate a national nervous breakdown, if not a total socio-political and cultural meltdown.

As the recipient of perceived and assumed favored treatment by an freshly empowered “fellow black” state’s attorney, white folks (via white cops, white prosecutors, and the overwhelming white judicial bench),screamed and squealed like stuck pigs, including accusing the State’s Attorney of “reverse racism” — and then demanded that a “special prosecutor” be appointed to set things right.

The “special prosecutor,” naturally, determined that Smollett made the whole thing up out of whole cloth and should be, must be, re-arrested, tried and convicted of the original charges, and made to pay “restitution” to the Chicago Police Department for the money and time it spent on this now obvious wild goose chase.

And so, Smollett was promptly convicted by a not-quite all-white jury of five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report. On March 10, he was sentenced to thirty months probation; a total of just over $140,000 in fines ($125,000 of which was to go directly to CPD), and 150 days in that literal hell hole, otherwise known as Cook County Jail.

At sentencing, the judge spoke for a full forty minutes. The trial and sentencing was televised, and it appeared to this observer that this judge was auditioning for a TV judge show. He called Jussie Smollett everything but a child of God.

Judge for yourself:

State’s Attorney Kim Foxx was among the vast majority of black Chicagoans who were disappointed by this sentence.

Indeed, Foxx penned an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times in whch she criticized local law officials for their handling of this case.

On Thursday (March 10), the damaging, costly, and disingenuous criminal prosecution of Jussie Smollett came to an end. As Cook County State’s Attorney, it pains me deeply to say that, in this particular case, our justice system failed, she stated.

She also addressed the “hoopla” which accompanied this matter from the start. And, importantly, she addressed the criticism, second-guessing, and “Monday-morning-quarterbacking” by those who disagreed with her initial handling and decisions in this matter.

Given the reputational price Smollett paid, the $10,000 bond we held, and the fact that he’d never been accused of a violent crime, my office made the decision not to further pursue a criminal conviction. This story should have ended there, as thousands upon thousands of non-prosecuted cases do every day, she wrote.

She called the relentless pursuit of the star “mob justice,” and “overkill” when one considered the more pressing — life and death — issues facing this city.

Just because we do not like the outcome should not mean we bully prosecutors and circumvent the judicial process to get it changed. Smollett was indicted, tried, and convicted by a kangaroo prosecution in a matter of months,” she said. “Meanwhile, the families of more than 50 Black women murdered in Chicago over the last 20 years await justice.

Foxx ended her missive on an ominous note, implying that this trial and sentence could set a precedent among prosecutors nationwide.

I worry it [the trial outcome] will serve as a deterrent to the next generation of prosecutors eager to fight for critical reforms. Anyone interested in an equitable system of justice should be worried too, she argued.

State’s Attorney Foxx’s complete (and damning) op-ed is here.

Commentary

Judge Linn seemed to be arguing with himself as he repeatedly stated that what Jussie Smollett did here somehow diminished the “validity” and “credibility” of those who are victims of “real” hate crimes. That’s right. He seemed to be trying to convince himself that what he was about to do to Jussie Smollett was the right thing to do.

By filing a false police report and claiming such serious and egregious acts to have been perpetrated against him, so sayeth Judge Linn, Smollett had made it more difficult for hate crime victims to be taken seriously and lessened their chances of receiving “justice.” Therefore, this judge had been left with no reasonable choice, he reasoned, but to lower the boom on this man with at least some jail time, even though Smollett was a “first offender” with no criminal history whatever, and no one (other than the poor, put-upon Chicago Police Department’s feelings) had even been threatened, let alone physically hurt, throughout this whole sad saga.

The problem with this argument, though, is that the filing of false police reports is a common practice, not only in the City of Chicago, but throughout the nation. The vast, vast majority of those cases are disposed of in the manner that State’s Attorney Foxx initially handled this one.

Recall the white Central Park dog-walker who was videotaped making a telephonic false claim of assault by a black birdwatcher, who had merely asked her to leash her dog. She was fired from her job and had her dog taken from her. Yes, she was charged with making a false police report, but the case was dropped after she attended some “educational” and “sensitivity” classes. In that case, that white woman — Amy Cooper — came thisclose to standing back and standing by as she would — hopefully, eagerly — watch in voyeuristic glee while New York’s finest confronted, arrested (and/or worse) her supposed assaulter, Christian Cooper — black male Christian Cooper.

If a white woman is not jailed for putting a black man’s life in jeopardy, then a black man whose actions threatened no one should not be jailed either.

And so, what we are witnessing here is more of the same old double standard when it comes to black people and “criminal justice.” There is quite obviously one set of rules, one set of laws for white people, and another for black people.

You see, Smollett’s real crime was not in making a false police report, but of circumventing the city, county, and state’s infamous “criminal justice system” as a whole, and thereby, especially, embarrassing the Chicago Police Department.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with State’s Attorney Foxx that what Jussie Smollett did was wrong. But, again, I also agree with Foxx that what he did, did not warrant jail time.