Jussie Smollett sentenced to 150 days in prison for fake hate crime

[aotearoagal]

'Empire' actor #JussieSmollett was sentenced to 5 months in jail for staging a racist and homophobic attack.https://t.co/6pY8JFT9tQ
- USA TODAY (@USATODAY) March 11, 2022
At his sentencing today, Jussie Smollett was sentenced to serve 150 days in jail, in conjunction with a 30-month felony probation. The judge also ordered Smollett to pay $120,000

Comments

[hyperpop]

He has undoubtedly made things worse for himself and his behavior has been horseshit, but I think people are under the impression that there was an abundance of physical evidence against him when really the most damning evidence against him is his own foolishness. We know he played it up for the police, and that he knew the brothers before hand, but otherwise all we have to go on are his bizarre embellishments, his reluctance to cooperate with police, and his description of one of the attackers as white.

The trial itself came down to whether or not he believed he was the victim of a crime when he filed the police reports, and fuck if I know but I think it’s odd that people are so quick to think he’s delusional enough to stage something so heinous and stupid for such a stupid reason, but not delusional enough to think he was being targeted by these men even if he knew them or had a relationship with them, and panicked.

Throw in the fact that the charges were initially dismissed and his record on the way to being erased when a special prosecutor re-opened it - a prosecutor who had personally represented Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner during the Trump/Ukraine investigation and who Trump had personally requested represent him during the mueller investigations, AND whose firm had represented Ivanka and Jared during the same Trump/Ukraine investigation, the obvious political motivations implicated in that, plus the conflicts of interest from the state attorney, the police, the judge, etc. and it’s a whole fuckin mess.

TLDR you aren’t a clown, this shit is wild and the case itself is not as clear cut as it’s often made out to be. He’s definitely an idiot though.

[delfintaka]

I am not arguing with you that politics might have affected his sentence.

But his case was unsealed as a call by multiple respected national newspapers for more transparency.

The special prosecutor was assigned to look into the case and decided to reopen it because (according to him) the state's attorney's office "did abuse its discretion in deciding to drop charges and put out false or misleading public statements about why it did so."

I like to blame Tramp for stuff as much as the next guy, but this seems like a case of a corrupt office abusing its power for personal gain + someone hustling for Smollett ( who, in addition to being black and gay, is rich and well connected)

[hyperpop]

Oh I agree and absolutely Foxx handled everything so, so badly every step of the way. I worded that poorly - I didn’t mean to imply that the Trump administration was behind the assignment of Webb - I only mention the Trump connections as an example of the weirdness and noise surrounding the case that I think make it understandable for someone to have trouble following along.

[delfintaka]

Oh gotcha. I reread your comment just now and see how i misunderstood it. My apologies.