There is a component to the Jussie Smollett case that is understandably still confusing people and that his remaining supporters are still trying to use as an argument that there was misconduct involved in getting him tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail time - that is that the charges were initially dropped by the DA, Kim Foxx.
Even Kim Foxx has made this complaint. There's one big problem with this argument though - she recused herself! After she recused herself, she had no legal authority to dismiss the charges. You don't get to recuse yourself, spend months making friendly phone calls to the sister of the accused, wait until the accused is indicted by a grand jury, and then swoop in with a puppet to get your friend's charges dropped. That's what Foxx did.
Yes, there was prosecutorial misconduct; but, it happened on the opposite side. The leftists who are defending Smollett should be as pissed about Kim Foxx's actions as I am. It's a story of a one percenter being accused of a felony who has a connection with a person in government who tried to bend the rules in order to get her one percenter friend of scot free in a way that none of us normal folk could ever hope to get off.
Taraji P Henson on Jussie Smollett:
"I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime. Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false."
Look, call my criticism of this take what you want. Still, I find this offensive.
She claims that she's not debating Smollett's innocence yet she evokes the murder of Emmett Till immediately thereafter knowing full well that Till never did what was claimed. We know that Smollett is guilty. He was facing three years in prison and, if the judge felt compelled to give himself more work, he could have been facing fifteen years in prison. Five months in jail isn't cruel and unusual for what Smollett did.
How would one not find it offensive if a defender of Smollett compared him to, say, Anthony Broadwater who is a black man who spent more than a decade in prison and more than three decades on the sex offender registry due to a false rape accusation by a white woman? This is basically what Henson is doing.
I empathize with her and understand that she's trying to defend a friend; but, there are fucking limits. Till and Broadwater were legitimate victims. Smollett isn't a victim.