60 replies already. Did anyone already say “not prosecuted does not mean cleared”?
Had he gone to trial and been found innocentnot guilty he would then have been “cleared”.
Edited to adjust sloppy use of language, as pointed out below. But “not prosecuted” is not “cleared” it is simply “still innocent in the eyes of the law”. “Cleared” is tried and found “not guilty”. I’m not commenting on his innocence or guilt, merely a headline that reads as if he was tried and acquitted, as opposed to “charges dropped”. @anon21100188 (and @anon50609448 - being “clear” as you put it is a different use of language. No ongoing prosecution does not equate to “cleared”.) Seeing as this is now a pedantry issue I’ll say no more having corrected my bad use of the term “innocent”. Hope that’s clear.
If it’s Kevin Graham, it’s not at all odd to think he might be biased in his criticism.
He previously criticized her and fought her over wanting to turn the whole investigation over to the FBI, so any argument now that “he only wants an independent prosecutor” looks like pure hokum.
I have to say that looking at the coverage the person I’m most irritated with is the Mayor. He asked how Smollett “dared” to proclaim himself innocent. Hey, dumbass, he hasn’t been found guilty of anything, and it doesn’t look like that is going to change. A fucking mayor shouldn’t be going in public and declaring people guilty of crimes.
Not to mention that “ah hominem” only applies to arguments. A letter of support is an opinion piece, not an argument. Not trusting someone’s opinion because you’ve found them to be self-serving and deceitful in the past is good sense, not some kind of fallacy.
I feel like you are trying to making “cleared” into a technical term when it isn’t one. Smollett is not “clear” to the same degree that a not guilty verdict would “clear” them because it’s possible for them to be charged with the same crime in the future. But Smollett is “clear” in the sense that there is no ongoing attempt to prosecute. But criminal courts don’t find you “innocent” they only find you “not guilty”. It’s not an affirmative declaration by the court, it’s just a declaration that you have not been found guilty. You are innocent automatically by virtue of “innocent until proven guilty”.
But if the idea is that somehow we have more reason to suspect Smollett now than we would if there had been a trial, I want to point out how perverse that thinking is. We are comparing these two situations:
There was sufficient evidence to bring a person to trial (that is, a prosecutor thought there was a reasonable chance of conviction) but it turned out to be insufficient evidence to convict
There was insufficient evidence to even have a trial
The idea that (2) is stronger evidence of guilt than (1) seems pretty backward.
At the risk of going way into the weeds and/or pedantry, he couldn’t really have been found “innocent” if he’d gone to trial. The options are guilty or not guilty in a criminal trial, and because there is a presumption of innocence going in an acquittal means that the presumption remains intact.
Sometimes a court will go out of its way to state that the defendant appears to be actually innocent, but there isn’t really a mechanism in the trial court to do this.
But to your point, the prosecutor and judge here very deliberately didn’t state that Smollett was, in fact, innocent, and instead are just making a bunch of vague statements that tell us nothing and only muddy the issue of what actually happened. I’m assuming that if new facts were discovered that exonerated Smollett, like a 3rd party who set up the attack without his knowledge, for example, the SA would have told the public that as well as informed the police and mayor’s office, but who the hell knows any more!?
I wouldn’t assume that. Exposing facts that show Smollett to be innocent may open them up to a lawsuit where Smollett would argue that they negligently or maliciously overlooked those facts in a rush to arrest. If think being evasive about the whole thing is just as consistently with them knowing Smollett is unequivocally innocent as it is with them thinking Smollett is guilty but having to drop the charges for some other reason.
I stand by my assertion that you are trying to assign a technical meaning to a word that is not technical. Smollett is off the hook, that’s all “cleared” means.
They are open to that lawsuit whether or not they clarify for the public, though. If there are new facts that justified the dismissal, those are either known to Smollett’s team now or are subject to discovery. I don’t want to be misunderstood, though: one would assume that the SA’s office would disclose these facts under normal circumstances, but these are obviously anything but.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that the SA’s decision here indicates he’s guilty, and I’m also not arguing that it indicates he’s actually innocent. The way they’re doing it is just the worst of all worlds because the fact-finding role of a trial has been taken off the table and everyone is simply insisting that their preconceived notions of the facts must be right.
If Smollett is actually innocent and they went about “clearing” him in this way, they are doing him a great disservice by not making clear their reasons. If he did what they allege, then it’s fucked up that he gets to walk out and proclaim his innocence. If something else happened that justified dismissal, the public has a right to know about why these steps were taken.
ETA: I should add that I don’t intend this to turn into a “well, actually…” tit for tat given that I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing about anything here and are both expressing surprise at what’s going on. Thanks for the interesting exchange.
I sort of agree. I think the most likely scenario is that Smollett had the attack staged, the police did something unthinkably stupid/corrupt that would make key evidence inadmissible at trial, and everyone wants to sweep this under the rug. But my knowledge that the Chicago PD has a history of fabricating evidence is nagging me, and on the flip side my knowledge that the justice system treats rich guilty people better than poor innocent ones is nagging me as well.
In my book “cleared” = “acquitted”. Acquittal requires a trial (technically). When I see a headline using the word “cleared” I expect it to relate to a trial. We are assigning different meanings (technical or otherwise), that is all.
(eta) I agree, most normal people will move on. The people I’m talking about are a few steps outside of normal. Entrenched, if you will. There won’t be moving on for them, and it will continually be referenced any time a situation comes up where it’s easier/advantageous to blame the victim. Personally, I hope a year or so from now I’ll suddenly think about this, and realize you’re right.
Quibbling aside, dimes against dollars it comes down to corruption in Foxx’s office that led to dropping the charges. It’s unfortunate that we’ll probably never know.
