What’s the solution? Mandatory minimum sentencing?
Hi. Sorry. I didnt’t mean to say PD’s are lazy. They do tend toward inexperienced, but that’s not their fault. It’s the system that I’m taking to task, not the defense attorneys. I’m in the corner of defense attorneys; the corrupt system in which the operate is the problem.
Sincere apologies for conflating the two.
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No worries. And you aren’t wrong that there are a lot of relatively inexperienced PDs out there. The burnout rate is massive.
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It is. It’s all a process of negotiation. He’s going to plead guilty, because, as I mention below, his lawyer is going to advise him to focus on dealing with some much bigger problems than Chicago PD’s unhappiness. He will end up with minimal prison time on these Chicago charges.
The real issue is the federal problem, which hasn’t even begun yet. It’s pretty obvious that he’s also going to be charged for sending himself this letter containing white powder. USPS is very very good at investigating things like that. No one gets away with it, and we’ve already seen that he’s no criminal mastermind. It stands to reason that if he faked the noose, he also faked the powder previously, so I’m going on that assumption.
The white powder in the mail is federal, it’s being investigated by the FBI and USPS, and it’s far more serious than the state-level charges of the false police report. On top of that, there’s no parole in the federal system, so any federal sentence he gets, he’s going to have to serve 85% of it.
There are many crimes he could be charged with at the federal level.
Unlike what happened with Chicago PD, we will not hear any leaks about the federal investigation until it moves forward.
He’s going to need a lot of money and a good legal team.
Beyond all these criminal issues, what’s he going to do with his life? He’s in his 30s and will be flat broke by the end of this, and it will be tough for him to find a job.
His punishment is very harsh, even if all these state level charges are plead down significantly.
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I understand why law enforcement would be ticked off, but that still doesn’t justify charging a guy who faked a violent racist attack with more crimes than you’d charge an actual violent racist attacker with.
Smollett needs to be held accountable for his crime, but 16 felonies sounds like ridiculous overkill.
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I’m going to say F-them both. Manafort is our well known old sort of evil, but Smollett’s BS eats away at the credibility of everyone who reports a hate crime. He’s going to be the poster boy for every fucktarded GOP rimmer who desperately wants to believe that they’re actually the persecuted ones (being white Christians after all), and that crimes directed at people solely because of their race or sexuality simply don’t happen or are massively overblown.
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You can say whatever you like, obvs.
Personally, I intentionally use the term “unfuck” because most people enjoy sex if they do it right, and I don’t believe in rewarding bad behavior.
‘Unfuck’ means I hope they never get laid or have an orgasm again; that’s a far worse curse to wish upon someone, IMO.
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It’s terrifying that lots of people are going to see this as justice. It’s disgusting.
This makes me so angry.
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Such a shame it’s come to this. For Jussie, for the fight against racism… all round.
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But, you dont understand. Manafort led “an otherwise blameless life,” excepting his 20-year crime spree. “And he’s also earned the admiration of a number of people,” some of them non-criminals. His crimes were “garden-variety”, and not something from the “hardware” or “produce” aisle. And finally, he did not collude; not colluding means everything else he did shouldn’t even really count.
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All the judge would have to do is drop a Manafort. (Isn’t that what they call giving ridiculously light sentences now, “dropping a Manafort”?)
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I think season 3 is the best one yet.
Came for this, more on that here:
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Would have attracted next to zero media frenzy. “MAGA” and “white guys” were the straws that stirred the drink.
Possibly so. But no one other than those who read Brietbart or watch Hannity would have even heard about it in the first place.
Yeah, I didn’t realize how many (actually) separate felonies Manafort actually was convicted of. But Smollett isn’t a white, rich, establishment Republican, so the odds really aren’t in his favor.
(Reading the Judge’s statements in the Manafort case this morning, I realized how explicitly he was revealing his belief that jail time - any jail time at all - for a rich white man was a bigger punishment than for anyone else. Clearly a common sentiment among judges.)
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It doesn’t work like that. IANAL etc, but just one random example I found on Google news, this perpetrator faced half a dozen serious felonies involving rape of a child. She plead, most of the charges were dropped, the two remaining felonies were allowed to run concurrently, and the judge said she could leave prison as soon as she completes a treatment program. If she had gotten real years on all the original charges she would have been in for decades, but instead she got two felonies and will be out in a couple of months probably. Anyway, just an example to show the big gap between the initial set of charges and the final result in prison. It’s a lot of negotiation and also state sentences aren’t real time. They can run concurrently, have parole, etc. Another random example from Google News, this guy got a 20 year felony for burglary, but it’s 20 years suspended so he’s not actually serving it. It’s harsh, his life is very much destroyed, but he’s not stuck in prison for 20 years.
I’m just illustrating, this is often what happens with state level charges, and these 16 felonies are definitely not going to result in 16 years in state prison. (Edit: unless he pleads not guilty and goes to a jury trial and gets convicted on all of them, but that’s very unlikely to be what happens in this case.)
As I said above, it’s a whole different world with his upcoming federal problems. First, all kinds of far more serious federal charges are possible. Second, federal sentences are real sentences. There is no parole in the federal system anymore and convicts must serve 85% of their time for sentences longer than a year but less than life. This is why, btw, you’ll sometimes see federal judges sentencing someone to a year and a day. The judge is being nice. A year would equal 365 days, but a year and a day would equal 311 days.
I’d imagine if it was a prosecutor or cop that got attacked the book would be thrown down. They’re the ones with the discretion to throw down. I’m not saying it’s fair, but oil catches fire faster when you throw it into the fire than gasoline away from the fire.
Apart from the terribleness of the crime and our egregious disparity in sentencing, what the hell? How have we come to a place where pretending to be a victim is a solid career move? I don’t mean to suggest there is anything dishonorable in being a crime victim. But this guy’s plan was to get more money and fame by proclaiming victimhood?
Clearly it is not.
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