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Just days after Jussie Smollett was charged with 16 charges related to an alleged hate crime, the besieged "Empire" actor was in a courtroom in Chicago on Tuesday after -midi, waiting for a judge to decide whether to allow cameras in future proceedings.
Smollett was initially charged with a lying head to the authorities on February 20. Last week, a grand jury charged him with 16 counts of lying to the authorities, or eight counts of charges he told to the officer in charge. responded to the act. and eight for what he later told a detective on the fact that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic beating by two masked men in downtown Chicago in January. .
JUSTICE SMOLLETT INDICATED IN 16 ACCOUNTS OF FELONY FOLLOWING CHICAGO'S ATTACK CLAIMS
Police said that Smollett, who is black and gay, had organized the January 29 incident because he was unhappy with his salary on the Fox show and that he wanted to promote his career.
Smollett's lawyer, Mark Geragos, called the charges "over-exploitation of lawsuits". Smollett maintains his innocence.
The Chicago police made it clear that she was upset by the man who, according to them, had put the city of Windy in the spotlight over racial relations.
"What you have, it's a police department and prosecutors visibly angry at him for embarrassing the city, so they've taken each of his lies to make another charge," he said. said Terry Sullivan, a reputed local lawyer who helped convict serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1980 who killed 33 young men, said.
Although Smollett 's lawyer described the indictment as 16 counts, Chicago defense lawyer Joseph Lopez, who is not not involved in the Smollett case, told The Associated Press that it was so that the Chicago attorneys were doing business.
The alleged attack of the Chicago attack against Jussie Smoltelet: a calendar of events
"It is common practice that Cook County lawyers do their best to charge any type of crime," he said.
A former state appeals judge suggested that such a strategy could be used by prosecutors trying to protect themselves from the possibility that a jury or judge might believe some of the allegations but not all
"If you only charge him with one or two counts and find him not guilty, you're done," said David Erickson, who currently teaches at Chicago's Kent College of Law. "This gives the prosecution the opportunity to convince him of one of those lies."
Lopez said that it seemed that when prosecutors had appeared before the grand jury, they had simply dissected the case, breaking the story of Smollett into pieces and accusing him of a leader. charge for every detail that they thought they had invented.
This means that one charge could come from Smollett's claim that the men engaged in racist and homophobic taunts, and another for what he said was the way they beat him. Another could be related to his claim that the men had sprayed him with an unknown chemical and yet another for his statement that one of them would have passed a rope tied like a rope around the neck. The police then claimed that he could see that one of the men was white because he could see the skin around his eyes. The two police men said that Smollett had been hired to take part in the attack and that they were both black.
"Lies accumulate fast enough," Lopez said.
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Each leader is a class 4 crime, punishable by imprisonment for one to three years. If Smollett is convicted, a judge could allow him to be put on probation instead of imposing a prison sentence.
Lopez and Erickson agreed that if Smollett is convicted, it does not matter whether it is one or more counts with regards to sentencing. This is because he would be sentenced for only one of them.
"If you add them all up, it's still only a crime," Erickson said. "It's like that."
And Lopez said that if Smollett is convicted of multiple counts, prosecutors may request that sentences be served consecutively, but it is highly unlikely that a judge will do so.
The legal problems of Smollett can not begin and end with this indictment. A few days prior to the January 29 incident, a threatening letter to Smollett had been sent to the studio where the show was being televised – a letter that Johnson informed reporters the day Smollett appeared in court that The actor had actually sent.
The FBI, which is investigating this letter, declined to comment on the investigation. But if Smollett was talking to the FBI, according to what he would have said, he could have more legal problems.
"Lying to the FBI is a crime," said Erickson.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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