[ad_1]
In February, a grand jury issued a new 6-count indictment against Smollett.
Despite “substantial abuse of discretion and operational failures,” Cook County state attorney Kimberly Foxx and staff’s dismissal of charges against Jussie Smollett has not reached the level of criminal offenses , according to Special Prosecutor Dan K. Webb.
In January 2019, the former “Empire” actor told police he had been targeted in a racist and homophobic attack in which he claimed the attackers beat him, tied a noose around him. neck and poured some sort of chemical into him.
After an investigation, police determined that Smollett had organized the attack, hiring two brothers to help him succeed. He was charged and indicted, but Foxx’s office dropped all charges in March 2019. This prompted Webb to be appointed by a judge last summer to investigate what happened.
Webb said he concluded Foxx should not have legally recused himself and appointed a deputy, Joseph Magats, to be the acting state attorney and that when she learned of this “major legal flaw “, she” ignored[d]”advice on how to remedy the problem. The proper procedure was to” challenge the entire CCSAO and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. “
He also said Foxx kept in touch with Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, even after learning on February 8 that he was a suspect, and “then made false statements to the media claiming that she had ceased all communication. with Ms Smollett as soon as she learned that Mr Smollett was a suspect. ”Webb maintains that Foxx was in contact with the sister until February 13, 2019.
Further, Webb wrote that Foxx office prosecutors “were not aware of any new evidence between the time the OSACC filed a 16-count indictment against Mr. Smollett on March 7. 2019, when OSACC believed they had a strong case against Mr. Smollett, and March 26, 2019, when the entire indictment was dismissed. ”
Webb further argued in the report that under a subpoena, key decision makers in the dismissal of the case by the Cook County State Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) offered “significant explanations. and significantly differing on how the resolution was reached ”.
Foxx said in a statement that his office “categorically rejects the [special prosecutor]The qualifiers of its exercise of prosecutorial discretion and private or public statements as “abuse of discretion” or misrepresentation to the public “and that” any implication that the statements made by the OSACC were deliberately inaccurate is false. She said her office will submit a written response to the full report after receiving it.
“ Great caution ”
Foxx abruptly recused herself from the case on February 19, 2019, out of “an abundance of caution … based on familiarity with potential witnesses to the case,” a spokesperson said at the time. Smollett was soon charged with felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report and surrendered to the police. On March 8, 2019, a grand jury rendered an indictment of 16 counts against him. Less than three weeks later, Foxx’s office dismissed all charges against Smollett.
The findings of Webb’s investigation into Foxx’s office complete the second half of the special prosecutor’s tenure.
He was appointed last year by Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin to determine whether Smollett should be prosecuted again after Foxx’s office dismissed the charges and investigate the handling of the case by CCSAO. Webb concluded that Smollet should.
In February, an Illinois grand jury presented Webb’s findings accusing Smollett of six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers. Smollett’s trial has been delayed by the pandemic.
Foxx acknowledged in his statement that lessons had been learned in the fallout from his decision to drop charges against Smollett.
“As a result of the issues raised in the press release and discussions about them, the OCWAA has already made a number of changes to its operations, including the hiring of a new OCWA Ethics Officer and a greater separation of their function from the administration of the office and the strengthening of the challenge plan with clear guidelines and explicit definitions of conflicts of interest. ”
In March, Foxx won a Democratic primary and is expected to win against her Republican opponent in November, two years after winning a previous Democratic primary in which she won 72% of the general election vote, according to the Chicago Tribune. She heads the second-largest attorney’s office in the United States, behind the Los Angeles County District Attorney, according to the CCSAO website.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Stephanie Wash, Alex Perez, Karma Allen and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link