Jussie Smollett's attorney, Nenye Uche, tells TMZ ... Jussie is "very pleasantly surprised," even "ecstatic." Uche emphasizes the court decision was unanimous.
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00:00First, give us your reaction to a pretty stunning reversal of fortune for Jesse Smollett.
00:09Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, I didn't see, I don't see it as a surprise.
00:14Obviously we're ecstatic, we're happy.
00:17But really my position is it shouldn't have gone this far.
00:21This prosecution was not a prosecution, it was a persecution.
00:25And prosecutions ought to be based on facts, not on vindictiveness.
00:29And that's what this seemed like.
00:31And that has no place in our American jurisprudence.
00:35And so I'm very happy.
00:36One thing I want to really emphasize here is this was not a divided court.
00:40This was a unanimous decision by our Supreme Court.
00:44And that speaks a lot as to what I'm saying now.
00:47And then, yeah, have you spoken to Jesse?
00:49What was his reaction to this?
00:53Obviously he's been out and starting his comeback in Hollywood.
00:58What was his reaction?
00:59He was very pleasantly surprised.
01:02You remember that Jesse has been through a lot.
01:05Each turn we've received bad news, whether it was at the lower court, in the trial court
01:11with the jury's verdict, whether it was the fact that the trial court even allowed this
01:15case to go forward, whether it was the appellate decision.
01:19And so I think from a human perspective, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm going to wager,
01:23I think there was a feeling of, you know, here we go again.
01:28And he was pleasantly surprised, to put it mildly.
01:31He's very ecstatic.
01:33And I would say the biggest feeling I got from him was a feeling of relief that this
01:38is behind him now and he can move forward with his life.
01:41I've been kind of just watching what's going on around the country.
01:45And I think this case is so relevant in that respect that you have a state's attorney,
01:50Kim Fox, who made a deal with Jesse.
01:53He lived up to his end of the bargain.
01:57And then when she dismissed the case, there was all this public pressure.
02:01Get him.
02:02Get him.
02:03And they caved to public pressure.
02:06And brought in a special prosecutor to finish the job, is how they would put it.
02:10And we have seen this now all over the country with prosecutors almost kind of like seeing
02:17which way the wind is blowing and making decisions based on public sentiment.
02:23That's what I'm feeling.
02:24I'm wondering if you think this is going to get noticed and we're going to get a course
02:29correction.
02:30I hope it does.
02:31Harvey, you raised two points and one point you don't explicitly say.
02:35But let's start with the explicit point you make.
02:38Of course, it's just disgraceful.
02:41Prosecutors.
02:42I used to be one ought to base prosecutions based on facts, not on popular decisions.
02:48What the public thinks you have to base it on.
02:51Can you prove the case?
02:53The implicit point you make is this.
02:54We live in an age of social media where there's a mass dissemination of information that is
03:00not facts and evidence where you have influencers, where you have potential jurors listening
03:06to tweets or watching tweets or listening to or watching YouTube videos or comedy skits.
03:12Right.
03:13So I think the courts need to really push back and defend the line of rule of law and
03:19due process and whether that means better jury instructions when it comes to well-known
03:26clients, whether they're popular or unpopular or something else, or whether there needs
03:32to be some sort of independent commission set up to educate prosecutors in a better
03:38way of how not to cave to public pressure.
03:41I don't know exactly the way forward.
03:44I just know the basic ones that affects trial lawyers, which is jury instructions.
03:50Celebrities right now, people that are well-known, they face an uphill battle.
03:55In the past, I think the assumption was if you were well-known, you were going to get
04:00away with it.
04:01Right now, it's not.
04:02It's actually against you if you're well-known and you get in trouble because everybody has
04:06an opinion.
04:07This is not the 1980s or the 1990s with the O.J. Simpson trial, where there's one news
04:12station delivering the information.
04:14Everyone is a reporter right now, and that's dangerous to the rule of law.
04:18I have no problem with that in terms of journalism, mass media, but in terms of the rule of law,
04:23something has to be done, and I hope something is done sooner rather than later.
04:29You won this case.
04:30There's absolutely no doubt about it.
04:32But there was a second trial, and there was a jury who heard all the evidence and concluded
04:40that Jussie Smollett faked this alleged assault.
04:44A hoax.
04:45So, what does this do for Jussie?
04:48Because he won on the law, but factually, can he overcome that?
04:53I think so.
04:54I 100 believe so.
04:56Remember that the two are not disconnected.
04:58They're very connected.
04:59He won on the law because the procedure that convicted him was unfair.
05:04It was a violation of his due process rights.
05:07It was a direct violation of the rule of law, and so anything derived from such a proceeding,
05:13one cannot say that that is valid.
05:17In fact, that juror's decision is null and void.
05:21Jussie is back where he started, which is he's presumed innocent, and there were a lot
05:25of problems with the cases, and this is what I'm going back to, which is everyone wanted
05:31Jussie Smollett convicted, period.
05:34I don't think we can deny that.
05:35A lot of people wanted him convicted.
05:37No one was willing to listen to the multiple reasonable doubts that scattered and littered
05:43the case, and my position is the court has held unanimously that the process was unfair
05:52to him, so a person cannot say, hey, the process is unfair to you, but we still think you're
05:59guilty.
06:00It doesn't work that way.
06:01The process is unfair, and anything that is derived from such an unfair process is null
06:06and void.