He ought to try the Affluenza denfense. Oh that’s rightt, he can’t because he’s not white.
Piling on the counts is a tactic to force him to plea deal. He is so obviously guilty that I don’t think a jury would try jury nullification that we have seen in some high profile trials.
Yes, 16 counts seems like overkill, but I suspect that those involved, including the prosecutors, the police, and Smollett’s defense attorneys, would like to see a plea deal worked out, one that doesn’t involve any jail time. Loading up the indictment might make Smollett see reason.
That makes quite a bit of sense. The DA’s office really screwed the pooch though in announcing these charges the day after the Manafort sentencing. It just highlighted the disparity in our justice system. He should certainly be punished, but no more than the runaway bride lady, balloon boy’s parents, or the white girl in TX who claimed she was gang raped by three black men.
Smollett is still playing the victim here, and never apologized to the City of Chicago,or Chicago PD.
Just hope he gets the psychiatric help he seems to be desperately in need of.
Time to start the lottery for how long it will take for his attorneys to explain to him what will happen if he insists upon taking this to trial, and for him to have his come-to-Jeebus moment. I give it no more than a week.
Exactly. He certainly wasted a lot of police resources, in a city that could use those resources to better advantage, but at least no one else was directly harmed by any of this. His stunts didn’t result in some innocent bystander spending weeks in a holding cell, for example.
So for this stupid stunt he could spend the rest of his young life in prison?
Although Smollet is charged with 16 felony counts, hasn’t he lived an otherwise blameless life?
What happened to yesterday’s comments on this piece? They were up- then they disappeared.
Wondering if Smollett will get more prison time than former CIA Director David*-betray-us*-Petraeus? Oops- he got a misdemeanor for passing classified Intel to his Mistress, (anything to avoid a Felony).
Looks like they got miscategorized. They’re in the Lounge section of the Hive.
Why does American media care so much this story? It has zero impact on most of us.
Following culture wars means eyeballs and that means more $$ for the networks.
Who cares about this story, really? Besides, there’s a bear fighting a shark down on Main Street!
Yeah, the defense strategy here does not seem tethered to reality.
“He says the indictment “is nothing more than a desperate attempt to make headlines in order to distract from the internal investigation launched to investigate the outrageous leaking of information by the Chicago Police Department and the shameless and illegal invasion of Jussie’s privacy.”
Not sure how they think doubling and tripling down and attacking the police is going to help.
Also, let’s not forget that it was this fool himself who brought race and politics into it, so this incident is absolutely of a different scale than the usual false report cases. And it should also surprise no one that officials in Chicago would be rightfully pissed at how he basically played up every right-wing, MAGA-hat-wearing douchebag’s stereotype of Chicago as a violent, dangerous place — it’s no wonder prosecutors want to hammer him. And now that we know it was a hoax, he’s now fueled all those same right-wing douchebag’s wet dreams about how all these kinds of attacks are “hoaxes” and “fake news.”
So, yeah, in a total vacuum, the charges may seem excessive, but given the circumstances here — that he created — they are understandable. The political, racial, and civic elements of this case are entirely his own doing. Jackass.
" I give it no more than a week."
Mark Geragos is going to go up against a Cook County Judge?
Good luck with that, Mark.
Someone’s sending a message. Most of those charges will be dropped.
He’ll have to plead guilty to filing a false police report. He should get a hefty fine, and have to do some community service to make up for the damage he’s done to the credibility of POC who file legitimate claims.
I bet he gets a longer sentence than Manafort.