Judge appoints special prosecutor in Jussie Smollett case
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Judge appoints special prosecutor in Jussie Smollett case who may REINSTATE charges against him
Jussie Smollett may yet still face charges for his ‘hoax’ crimes earlier this year.
A judge has just ruled that all previous actions by the State Attorney’s office after Foxx had recused herself were invalid and has mandated that a special counsel must be appointed to restore the faith of the citizenry. This special counsel, by order of the judge, can bring those charges back to Smollett again.
CBS CHICAGO – A Cook County judge has ruled a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the Jussie Smollett case, saying Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had no authority to hand it off to her top deputy after announcing she recused herself.
A special prosecutor would be allowed to bring new charges against the “Empire” actor if there are “reasonable grounds” to do so, Judge Michael Toomin ruled.
Toomin said Foxx’s contact with a relative of Smollett’s before he was charged did not rise to the level of a conflict of interest. He said she had no authority to appoint her top deputy, First Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Magats, to oversee the case after announcing she was recusing herself. He said Foxx effectively appointed Magats to a “fictitious” office to serve in her stead.
“What causes concerns is that she appointed him to an entity that had and has no legal existence. There is no office of acting state’s attorney,” he said.
“Here, the ship of the State ventured from its protected harbor without the guiding hand of its captain. There was no master on the bridge to guide the ship as it floundered through unchartered waters,” Toomin wrote in his ruling.
As a result, Toomin said there effectively was no state’s attorney when Smollett was arrested, charged, indicted, arraigned, and finally when charges later were dropped. So all of those decisions were invalid.
“The unprecedented irregularities identified in this case warrants the appointment of independent counsel to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of our criminal justice system,” he wrote.
Wow. This judge ain’t messing around.
From his ruling today he said this: “Smollett conceived a fantasy that propelled him from the role of a sympathetic victim of a vicious homophobic attack to that of a charlatan who fomented a hoax the equal of any twisted television intrigue.”
Yeah, it totally backfired on him! And now we might finally see justice done in this case.
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Hopefully.
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