But they needn't worry. Smollett should. He will be the new O. J., another man getting away with a crime he committed in full public view. That didn't work out very well for The Juice. In fact, he's a pariah for life. And it won't for Smollett either. He will be a despised person for the rest of his days and a symbol of unequal justice. He might as well have gone to jail, served the time, and been forgiven.
Yes, the media was playing up a potential sentence of 48 years, but that would have been unlikely to have happened. It would have been a few years and out, especially if the man apologized. Now he's in the situation of perpetually defending himself. Maybe he should hire a detective as O. J. did, promising to find just who the perps were ‐ someone perhaps in "the world of Faye Resnick," as Johnny Cochran famously put it.
Difficult to believe all of that was 25 years ago.