U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told actor Jussie Smollett the Chicago lawsuit against him “will be going forward.”
The city wants him to pay the $130,166 they wasted on his hoax. He claimed two men assaulted him with a noose and homophobic slurs.
Smollett’s case fell apart almost instantly. Evidence showed that he fabricated the attack, which led police to charge him “with disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to police.”
Shock went through Chicago when Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx “dismissed the 16-count indictment” with barely a peep.
From The Chicago Tribune:
Lawyers for Smollett argued in their motion that the actor could never have foreseen that Chicago police would investigate his claims so thoroughly — and therefore he shouldn’t be stuck with the $130,000 overtime bill.In their 12-page motion, Smollett’s attorneys said police investigations are a “discretionary function” of law enforcement and that there was no proof the damages allegedly incurred by the city were directly related to Smollett’s report — later determined by police to be a hoax.“The filing of a police report, in and of itself, does not necessitate a sprawling investigation, nor does it, as a practical matter, usually result in an investigation as extensive as the one CPD chose to undertake in this case,” Smollett attorney William Quinlan wrote.Quinlan said Smollett’s report merely enabled “police and prosecutors to decide whether and how to investigate.”
Kendall retorted that “it isn’t unreasonable to think” the city would put in as much effort as they did when Smollett reported the alleged crime. She noted it made sense for it to become a priority “given his celebrity and the ‘volatile climate’ of the times.”
The police department echoed Kendall’s sentiments. From NBC Chicago:
The police department has said it only did what was necessary and that it conducted a potential hate crime investigation because Smollett alleged that two masked men hurled racist and homophobic insults at him, beat him and looped a noose around his neck.”Whether it’s Chicago or any other U.S. city, when he reported a vicious hate crime it was going to be investigated at the highest level of vigor and detail,” said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. The investigation included canvassing the area for witnesses, dozens of interviews, scientific analysis of the rope as well as the liquid that Smollett said the men threw at him, and the collection of hours of surveillance video from cameras mounted on buildings, inside taxi cabs and from cameras along miles of city streets.
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