Free Republic

A hearing on a request for a special prosecutor in the Jussie Smollett case quickly switched its focus Thursday from the “Empire” actor to the judge on the bench. The proceedings grew unexpectedly heated when Sheila O’Brien, a retired appellate judge pushing for the special prosecutor, filed last-minute paperwork suggesting that Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. recuse himself from deciding the issue because his son has worked as a county prosecutor since last year. . . . Martin’s son, LeRoy III, who has been with the state’s attorney’s office since April 2018, works as a prosecutor in the juvenile...

Attorneys for Jussie Smollett don’t want a special prosecutor to investigate how the Cook County State’s attorney’s office handled the “Empire” actor’s criminal case. Smollett’s Los Angeles-based lawyers on Thursday filed a motion opposing former state Appellate Court Judge Sheila O’Brien’s request for a court-appointed special prosecutor to probe the abrupt dismissal last month of criminal charges against the actor for allegedly staging a fake hate crime attack near his Streeterville apartment. “The appointment of a special prosecutor would result in a duplication of effort at the expense of taxpayers,” the petition states. The petition states that a “judicial investigation”...