Appearing on the Fox News Channel Friday, former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis predicted the legal team of Empire actor Jussie Smollett will besmirch Chicago law enforcement in an attempt to beat a felony charge for filing a false police report regarding an alleged stage attack on him last month.
A partial transcript is as follows:
BILL HEMMER: If Smollett’s going to mount a defense here, which all signs indicate he will, what would his defense be, sir?
ED DAVIS: You are already seeing some signs of it, Bill, this morning. When defense attorneys don’t have any facts, they go to process. And they’re trying to throw enough smoke up there to establish reasonable doubt in the minds of the perspective jurors. That’s what this is all about. [Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson] described this very well yesterday. He called it a despicable crime, and when you hear his presentation and the presentation of the State’s Attornery, it’s almost an embarrassment of evidence here against Smollett.
BILL HEMMER: Maybe that changes in time. Here’s the attorneys for Smollett, part of there statement reads this way. It’s strong. “We witnessed an organized law enforcement spectacle that has no place in the American legal system… Mr. Smollett and notably, on the eve of a Mayoral election. Mr. Smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence and feels betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing.” My sense here is the case, if it goes to trial is decided by these two witnesses. They’ll get on the stand, and jurors would gage there testimony and how credible they are. In addition, you have a small amount of physical evidence, you have the phone, a text message, you’ve got a check that was cashed. You have a receipt from a home hardware store. What am I missing?
DAVIS: You’ve touched on most of the information, but when you have two young men, who are giving you a statement, and you can go back and corroborate that statement with all that evidence you just mentioned, in addition to the documentary evidence and the electronic evidence, you’ve got video evidence. You can actually see them moving around, going to the places. That’s very, very powerful to a jury. And so what you find is that, in this system, a defense attorney will attack the only people that they can attack, which is the accusers, the police, and that’s playing itself out. But, we’re very used to that, and there’s enough evidence here to move forward without a doubt.”
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