Stephen A. Smith Is Missing The Point In Jay-Z’s Dismissed Assault Case

When attorney Tony Buzbee filed a civil rape lawsuit against Jay-Z in December, it was certainly one of the most widely covered stories in the country. Buzbee, who represents multiple plaintiffs in the trials against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed a lawsuit for a Jane Doe who claimed that Combs and Jay-Z repeatedly raped her when she was 13 years old, at an afterparty for the MTV Video Music Awards. Unsurprisingly, before details about the case were even released, social media was flooded with reactions. Some people were speaking out on his behalf, expressing skepticism about whether Jay-Z actually committed these crimes.

ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith was one of the people who spoke out in Jay-Z’s defense early. In a December episode of his The Stephen A. Smith Show on YouTube, he said that he’d known Jay for 25 years and didn’t think Jay was capable of such an offense. And once the case was dismissed this week, he doubled down on his initial stance in another new video. He said that people who believed he was innocent may have avoided defending him because it wasn’t “clickbait” and that there weren’t enough people in Jay’s circle who had spoken out on his behalf.

He added that if he ever weathered similar allegations himself, that he would be disappointed if no one spoke out in his defense. “At the very least, somebody should be able to say, ‘I’ve known Stephen A. for 20, 25, 30, 40 years. Nah I can’t see him doing that,’” Smith said. “You’re just gonna go silent and leave him hanging like that?

“You can say two things at once,” Smith argued. “You can say ‘I wasn’t there, and I have no factual evidence to prove my position. But the person I’ve known for 25 years, nah, I don’t believe he would do that.’”

Stephen A. Smith is underplaying an important point here: predators are often well-versed (and in some cases, well-resourced) in being able to sanitize their image. They’re able to protect their reputations in the public and amongst friends and family, while doing reprehensible things behind closed doors. Knowing someone for decades in the context of one’s own relationship with them doesn’t mean that they know how this person interacts with other people. Maybe some of the people who Smith is deriding for their silence recognize that no matter how well you think you know someone, you never know what they’re truly capable of — and that it makes sense to get more information about a case before coming out in someone’s defense.

From the moment that Jay-Z was accused, he proclaimed his innocence and claimed that Buzbee was attempting to extort him. And it turns out that in the eyes of the court, he was right. There were inconsistencies in the Jane Doe’s story, which were pointed out by way of Jay’s lawyers and the media’s reporting. Two months after the civil lawsuit was filed, a judge dismissed it with prejudice, meaning that the case is permanently closed and can’t be reopened. But the right thing to do was to take a look at the facts and determine their legitimacy before coming to a conclusion.

There is certainly a long history of Black men being falsely accused of crimes, especially when it comes to sexual assault. And if you ask Jay-Z, not going to prison doesn’t mean that he’s unaffected. The NFL, which commissions his company Roc Nation to commandeer the Super Bowl Halftime Show, notably stood by him. And while there didn’t appear to be any businesses that publicly disassociated from Jay-Z in light of the accusations, Deadline reports that in a declaration made in the docket of Los Angeles Superior Court, Jay-Z claims the accusations cost him $20 million in lost deals. This appears to be not only a statement to further excoriate Buzbee, but to discourage any other potential lawsuits.

Jay-Z does appear to be innocent in this case, and the legal system was on his side. But that doesn’t mean that accusations should be dismissed immediately before they have a chance to be seriously addressed. 

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