Cheryl Bader was quoted in a USA Today article regarding the case against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett for allegedly orchestrating a hate crime hoax.
Cheryl Bader, a practicing lawyer and clinical associate law professor at Fordham University in New York, says prosecutors traditionally go into court with the advantage of being “cloaked with credibility,” because jurors tend to believe at the outset they have a good reason for bringing a case.
Now Foxx and her team are widely perceived to have allowed “a complete debacle of prosecutorial discretion” in the Smollett case, Bader says.
“They might be going into the courtroom having lost that cloak,” she says. “It’s not ideal… but ultimately I think a jury will look at the Kelly case on its own merits. Even if (prosecutors) don’t have the usual advantage, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t win.”