In Sun-Times op-ed, State's Attorney Kim Foxx says justice system 'failed' in Jussie Smollett case
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Cook County State's Attorney's office issued a brief statement Thursday night saying it was time to "move forward" after Jussie Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in the Cook County Jail for fabricating a hate crime against him.
But in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed, State's Attorney Kim Foxx did not mince words – arguing that the justice system had "failed" in the Smollett case, and saying a special prosecutor should not have been appointed to reopen the case after Foxx's office dropped the charges against Smollett.
Cook County Criminal Court Judge James Linn handed down the sentence Thursday evening. Afterward, the State's Attorney's office issued the following official statement: "The judge has spoken and given his sentence. As a county we are all ready to move forward. At the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, we will continue to prioritize violent crime and supporting victims as we respond to the relentless violence we are seeing."
In December, a Cook County jury found Smollett guilty of five of six counts of disorderly conduct, while acquitting him of the sixth count. Prosecutors had accused Smollett of paying two brothers – Abel and Ola Osundairo – to help him stage a fake racist and homophobic attack against himself in January 2019, and then lying to police about it, in a bid for publicity. The Osundairo brothers were the key witnesses against him at trial, and Judge James Linn said Smollett clearly used them as his "patsies."
Judge Linn on Thursday sentenced Smollett to 30 months' probation, and said he will be required to spend the first 150 days in jail, beginning immediately. He also ordered Smollett to pay $120,106 in restitution to the city and fined him $25,000.
Foxx's Sun-Times op-ed was published shortly after the sentence was handed down and did not mention the sentence. But in it, Foxx called the prosecution of Smollett "damaging, costly, and disingenuous."
Smollett, who is Black and gay, had told police he was attacked as he was walking home on Lower North Water Street around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2019. He claimed two masked men – one of them also wearing a red hat – shouted racist and homophobic slurs as they beat him, put a noose around his neck, and poured a chemical on him.
Cook County prosecutors dropped the original 16 disorderly conduct charges against Smollett in March 2019, just over a month after Chicago police had accused him of orchestrating a hoax. The charges were dropped after Foxx forfeited the $10,000 bail he had posted after his arrest. He also had performed 16 hours of community service with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel has called the decision to drop the charges against Smollett "a whitewash of justice," and then-Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has said he doesn't believe justice was served.
In August 2019, August, Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed Dan Webb, a former federal prosecutor, as a special prosecutor in the Smollett case; tasking him to not only investigate Foxx's handling of the case, but to decide whether Smollett should be further prosecuted on charges of staging the fake hate crime against himself. A new indictment and trial followed.
Foxx argued in her Sun-Times op-ed that after her office dropped charges against Smollett, the case should have been closed for good.
"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," she wrote. "This story should have ended there, as thousands upon thousands of non-prosecuted cases do every day."
But instead, Foxx wrote, taxpayers spent millions for "the criminal prosecution of a hoax."
"Rather than working collaboratively to stem rising crime or free the wrongly convicted, a small group of people hijacked the judicial system to enact what is best described as mob justice," she wrote.
Foxx wrote that the Smollett case was taken over by a mob that was "relentless, organized and effective" – with Webb having an open budget to investigate a "nonviolent Hollywood actor." She called the prosecution "a complete disregard for the discretion that prosecutors must have to be effective and independent."
"Just because we do not like the outcome should not mean we bully prosecutors and circumvent the judicial process to get it changed," Foxx wrote. "Smollett was indicted, tried and convicted by a kangaroo prosecution in a matter of months. Meanwhile, the families of more than 50 Black women murdered in Chicago over the last 20 years await justice."
Smollett himself erupted in an outburst after Judge Linn handed down his sentence.
"I am not suicidal. I am innocent, and I am not suicidal. If I did this, then it means that I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years, and the fears of the LGBT community," Smollett said. "Your honor, I respect you, and I respect the jury, but I did not do this. And I am not suicidal, and if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself, and you must all know that. I respect you, your honor, I respect your decision."
Later, upon being escorted from the courtroom to go to jail, Smollett raised his fist and yelled: "I am not suicidal! I am not suicidal, and I'm innocent! I could have said that I was guilty a long time ago!"
