Jussie Smollett’s lawyers and family are demanding an emergency suspension of the actor’s five-month jail sentence, saying “vicious threats” including a highly disturbing anonymous phone call raise serious concerns about his safety behind bars
The threat appears to recall the horrific 1997 police assault on Abner Louima in Brooklyn, in which Louima was sodomized with a broken broomstick in the bathroom of the 70th precinct by Justin Volpe, the disgraced NYPD Officer now serving 30 years for the attack.
In the new filing calling for Smollett’s immediate release, the actor’s lawyers claim he’s also become a target of “vicious threats” across social media following his conviction, and this “no doubt reflects the hatred and wish for physical harm toward Smollett which he may experience during incarceration.”
Jocqui Smollett said in a video posted on the actor’s Instagram Sunday that his brother was being held in a “psych ward” at the Cook County jail in Chicago but was “in no way, shape or form at risk of self-harm.” “I am not here to debate you on his innocence but we can agree that the punishment does not fit the crime. Emmett Till was brutally beat and ultimately murdered because of a lie and none of the people involved with his demise spent one day in jail, even after Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims were false. No one was hurt or killed during Jussie’s ordeal. He has already lost everything, EVERYTHING!,” Henson“To me as an artist not able to create that in itself is punishment enough.
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