ABC 7 Chicago has been investigating Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx ever since her office decided to drop the 16 felony charges against Jussie Smollett last month and, through the course of their investigation, the local news station found that Foxx let a convicted killer off the hook when she first took office.
16-year-old Derrion Albert was killed in a gang fight when he was walking home from school in 2009. Prosecutors charged four teens with Albert’s death, three of whom were convicted of murder and one pled guilty. ABC 7 Chicago reports:
But one teen – known then as “D.J.” – was 14 at the time. Prosecutors say he punched Albert and knocked him down, saying that he signed “his death certificate.”
Prosecutors decided to charge him as a juvenile in a special kind of case called an Extended Jurisdiction Juvenile prosecution or EJJ.
That means although “D.J.” was convicted as a juvenile – he was also sentenced to 30 years as an adult on the underlying offense of murder. However, that sentence would be stayed and not enforced unless he was convicted of a new felony after being released from juvenile custody.
According to Albert’s family, then-Assistant State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made the decision to go with the EJJ prosecution and encouraged them to accept the decision – READ MORE