The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
The Paper has reported that Jussie Smollett, an actor in the American drama "Empire," was arrested for reporting false police. Finally, after a two-year delay, his lawsuit came to fruition.
The new young actors were subjected to an uproar over hate crimes
On the evening of December 9, local time, a jury of six men and six women, totaling twelve people, submitted the results of the deliberations to the Chicago court after two days of consultation. The jury unanimously found that five of the six counts of obstruction of law and order on which Smallett was charged were convicted. That is to say, the jury members believe that the so-called hateful attack on his face in the street in 2019 is actually a farce directed by himself. According to the united States criminal law, crimes of obstruction of law and order similar to those of false police officers are classified as four-degree felonies and can be sentenced to up to three years in prison. The final sentence in the case will wait until the end of January and early February next year.
Jassie Smallett played his second brother Jamal in Hip Hop Empire
On Dec. 10, Smallett's defense attorney, Nenye Uche, said he would definitely appeal on behalf of his clients. He stressed that the case had been repeatedly reported by the media over the past three years, and that the jury members had long been influenced by it and had serious prejudices against his clients.
However, on December 11, members of the jury gave an anonymous interview to the Chicago Sun-Times, denying that they had a preconception about Smollett. The female juror told reporters that after nine hours of debate and consultation, they unanimously concluded that Jassie Smallett's words in court were untenable and lacked key witnesses, but that the testimony given by the nigerian brothers who attacked him, the other party in the case, was obviously more logical, so they made such a unanimous ruling.
The protagonist of this case, Jassy Smallett, was born in California on June 21, 1982, to an African-black mother and a white father who immigrated to the United States from Poland. The Smalllett family has six children, including Jassie, almost all of whom are child stars, and have also starred in ABC dramas such as "On Our Own".
Jassie Smallett (center) in Hip Hop Empire
Since 2015, Smallett has played the role of his second brother Jamal in fox television's hit American drama "Hip Hop Empire", and has been nominated for best actor in a television series at the American Teen Choice Awards for four consecutive years. In the first two seasons, his salary was around $300,000, but as the series became popular, the salary also rose all the way, and by the third and fourth seasons, he had been able to get nearly $2 million a season. He later played the navigator on the spaceship Contract in the sci-fi blockbuster Alien: Covenant, directed by Ridley Scott.
Played the Navigator in Alien: Covenant
Like Jamal, the life of Jassie Smallt has long been open to his comradehood, and often advocates for various related rights organizations and black affirmative action movements, and is regarded as the best of the young generation of black male actors in Hollywood.
But just over one o'clock in the morning on January 29, 2019, according to Smallett's own description and the images police later saw in monitor probes along the road, he braved minus ten degrees, wearing a sweater, and walked to a fast food restaurant a block away to buy a tuna sandwich. On the way home, he was beaten by two masked men who poured an unknown liquid on him, shouted abusive words against blacks and homosexuals and slogans in support of then-US President Donald Trump, and finally put a white rope around his neck — an iconic object from the Ku Klux Klan era, symbolizing the lynching of black people by American racists.
After returning home, Jassy Smallett called the police. At 2:30 a.m., the Chicago police arrived at his home and found him wearing a white rope around his neck and a tuna sandwich he had bought on the table, which was very intact. Smollett told police that he had asked a doctor to see him and that the injuries were not serious, mainly bruises. He also stressed that the two murderers were wearing masks, but through the gaps around the eyes, they could see that the skin color was lighter and whiter, which was self-evidently implying that the other was white.
On the morning of January 29, the news of the Attack on Smallett alarmed the entire United States. Hollywood and U.S. politicians, including Trump, have all stepped forward to strongly condemn the hate crimes committed by the two thugs. Biden, who was running for president of the United States at the time, expressed his support for Jassie Smallett, stressing that racial discrimination and sexual discrimination should not exist in the streets of the United States and the hearts of American citizens. Her running mate, now Vice President Kamala Harris, said Smolittle was one of the kindest and gentlest people she knew, denouncing it as a modern version of black people being lynched by whites.
The facts of the case were clear, and the trial was full of twists and turns
Just two weeks later, however, the situation took a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reversal. Relying on monitor probes to collect evidence, after more than 20 police officers followed up and visited, the police successfully arrested two perpetrators: Olabinjo Osundairo from Nigeria and Abimbola Osundairo brothers. The two confessed that they had met Smallitut because they were extras on the crew of "Hip Hop Empire", and this time at Small's instructions, they received a commission of $3500 and attacked him; and that Smallett planned this scene in order to make himself a victim of hate crimes and gain sympathy and greater popularity.
According to the brothers' confessions, the $100 fee for the purchase of ropes and other tools was also paid by Smollett. The two sides had agreed to start on the evening of January 28, but because of the delay in Smollett's flight from New York to Chicago, he could not arrive at an agreed roadside location without surveillance probes until January 29 to complete the plan. In the face of police suspicion, Smallett refused to give the mobile phone he used to the Chicago police for investigation, but because the remaining circumstantial evidence was sufficient, coupled with the multiple contradictions in the testimony he gave when he was interrogated by the police several times, the Chicago police finally determined that it was a false case. The local prosecutor's office decided to file a case against Smollett on sixteen counts of obstruction of law and order.
However, at that time, no one would have thought that this case would wait so long when it really went to court proceedings.
The reason why the trial will be delayed for more than two years, in addition to the well-known epidemic reasons, is mainly due to the disturbance caused by the replacement of prosecutors. Originally, the case should have been presided over by Ms. Kim Foxx, the head of the local prosecutor's office, but as the first African-American woman in local history to be elected as the number one in the procuratorate, Attorney General Fox withdrew from the investigation of the case on the grounds that she and some of the witnesses involved in the case knew each other in their lives, entrusting his assistants with full responsibility.
On March 26, 2019, the Chicago Prosecutor's Office announced that it had dropped all sixteen charges against Smallett, fining him only the $10,000 third-party bond he had delivered, plus requiring him to complete 16 hours of community service. Such a sentence caused an uproar in the outside world, and the Chicago City Government, the Chicago Police Department and a number of U.S. prosecutors' organizations in the United States all came out to issue statements saying that the Decision of the Chicago Prosecutors was unjustifiable. Soon, chicago-based media exposed a flood of emails from Kim Fox's pressure aides, forcing prosecutors to put Special Counsel Dan Webb in charge of the case and re-file six counts of obstruction of law and order.
In a flash of two years, Jassie Smallett's "Hip Hop Empire" has finally come to an end, and the president of the United States has been replaced by Trump to Biden, but the prosecutor General, Ms. Kim Fox, has not been greatly affected and has been re-elected in 2020.
Last month, the case finally began to officially enter the trial stage. Smollett has always denied the prosecution's allegations. He argued that he had indeed given Abbinpala $3,500 in order to hire him as his personal fitness instructor; and that, according to him, Abimpla was still in a relationship with whom he was in some sort of relationship, but the latter had to go inside and be his personal bodyguard and hoped to earn twenty thousand dollars a month; he would plan such an attack after being refused.
However, this claim was firmly denied by the Nigerian brothers, who gave a detailed account of the process before and after Smallett proposed the action plan, which was obviously more logical and completely consistent with the confessions made by the two at the beginning of their arrest.
Choreographer Frank Garson (left) with Smollett
In addition, after the incident, frank Gatson, a well-known American choreographer, was also a name that appeared repeatedly in the media. The sixty-year-old has won six MTV Awards for Best Choreographer for Mike Jackson, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez and many other big-name artists. Because Smallett was hired to shoot an MV at the time, he also became Small's creative partner. According to the top choreographer, he rushed to Smollett after the incident, and he persuaded Smollett to call the police.
But throughout the trial this year, Smallett's defense lawyers never summoned the key witness to the courtroom, leaving the jury members suspicious. The police also asked why the sandwiches bought by the parties could still be brought home intact if there had been a fight. Such doubts eventually led the jury to conclude that Smallett was attacked in his own directing.
After the jury verdict was reached, from last week to this week, the case once again became the focus of the US media and public opinion after nearly three years. The conservative media and most neutrals have harshly criticized Jassy Smollett's misguided approach, accusing it of adding fuel to the fire, further intensifying racial tensions in American society, and causing black Africans who are truly discriminatory to encounter the "wolf coming" dilemma.
On the other hand, in line with Jassie Smallett and his team of lawyers, who continue to insist on his innocence, in addition to his closest siblings, there are also some Black American rights organizations such as Melina Abdullah, founder of the Los Angeles branch of Black Lives Matter. In the view of the USC Ph.D., the U.S. police, especially the Chicago police, "cannot be trusted, by contrast to Jassie Smallett, who is speaking out for black freedom."
Biden and Harris, two politicians who chose to support Small, did not reassert their position after the court ruling, with only the White House spokesman restrained in saying at a regular December 10 news conference that the Biden administration "respected" the jury's decision. As for Hollywood celebrities who have paid great attention to various American social movements in recent years, they have also shown a very rare calm in the past few days, and the colleagues of the "Hip Hop Empire" crew who had originally spoken out for Smollett, as well as well-known Hollywood actors and directors such as Viola Davis and Ava DeJolie, did not express their feelings on the jury's ruling.
In the past two years or so, Jassie Small, who has lost most people's trust due to scandal, has not been idle, although he was removed from the "Hip Hop Empire" crew early, but he used his free time to write and direct his own independent film about black gay love, "B-Boy Blues", which also made a world premiere at the 25th American Black Film Festival earlier last month. However, the film has not yet been able to find a company willing to release.
Boy Bruce poster
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe