The Cook County State’s Attorney has circulated an email asking prosecutors in the office to come up with other examples where they just dropped felony charges the way they did in the Jussie Smollett case.
According to the memo, obtained by the CBS affiliate in Chicago, the brass wrote, “We are looking for examples of cases, felony preferable, where we, in exercising our discretion, have entered into verbal agreements with defense attorneys to dismiss charges against an offender if certain conditions were met, such as the payment of restitution, completion of community service, completion of class, etc.”
Here’s the problem. Jussie did not do community service. Community service is often part of a plea deal where a certain number of hours is required by defendants who are convicted or cop a plea. In Jussie’s case, all he did was spend a few hours over the weekend at Rainbow PUSH. That is not community service.
As for restitution .. Jussie forfeited a $10k bond, and that’s it. As the Mayor said, it doesn’t come near to paying the cost of the investigation.
Internal emailing circulated throughout the State’s Attorneys office today.
Office looking for examples of other cases where charges have been dropped.
One day after charges were droped on Jussie Smollett. pic.twitter.com/5qrzYcw8N7
— Charlie De Mar (@CharlieDeMar) March 27, 2019
The email goes on to say, “Nobody is in trouble, we are just looking for further examples of how we, as prosecutors, use our discretion in a way that restores the victim, but causes minimal harm to the defendant in the long term.”
The concept of “minimal harm” to the defendant is confusing. Typically what happens is that a defendant would plead no contest to a reduced charge or a reduced number of charges, and maybe get community service and/or pay restitution. That didn’t happen in Jussie’s case.