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Will Smith’s comeback has been a disaster – but does the punishment fit the crime?
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Seems like you understand it quite well.
You’ll notice there’s a difference between understanding a motivation or impulse and acting on it, or indeed, condoning the act.
And we can also quite happily describe what Will did as wrong, just as we can be critical of Chris for making the joke in the first place.
That you seem think Will’s action invalidates any inappropriateness in Chris’s actions is itself pretty telling.
IMO they both suck. And we can say what the Oscar’s should have done with Will. I don’t really care. Cops aren’t going to press charges if the person assaulted doesn’t call for it regardless of where it happened. But also Oscar’s should have vetted that speech and been like “maybe don’t make fun of a person’s medical condition.” Which likely would have headed the whole matter off. Details.
Chris Rock is awesome, they hired him to be hilarious and he was. In no world is Will's 2nd reaction to the funny but lightly tasteless joke (man if they had waited to respond after the Oscar's, they would have eviscerated Chris Rock instead) appropriate. Again it was another performance, and you fell for it cause somehow you are putting both their actions on the same playing field. They aren't, no majority of people think that way either. Again that's why Will is going through this, he is the villain.
Also you need to stop watching TV and movies, police and the DA have the ultimate authority to press charges in the US and they do it all the time. The law isn't not-broken cause one party didn't press charges. That's honestly kinda adorable. The reason he didn't get arrested is cause he's more rich and famous than the guy he hit, and arresting him would have been more embarrassing for the event in the moment than doing nothing. As Chris Rock once said "If OJ drove a bus, he'd be Orenthal the bus driving murderer." A normal person would have received legal consequences.
You are telling on yourself, majority of weirdos have odd opinions on violence!
Once again, because it’s pretty clear you don’t read my comments: I’m not defending Will. You can stop adding things to my comment anytime now. You can stop explaining something incredibly obvious, which I have never argued.
They’re not going to prosecute a crime where the victim doesn’t want to testify or wants it dropped.
Because those become very hard to win, and they’ve got their win/loss ratio to worry about. It isn’t about whether the crime was committed or not. It’s about if they can win in court.
Tons of crimes go unprosecuted because one reason or another makes them difficult to win This was a relatively minor, one-off incident where the victim doesn’t want to press charges and the perpetrator has stellar legal representation.
Yes, crime dramas are good, I also watch them! SVU brought the angry guy back, he's bald now tho.
congratulations on showing your ignorance. keep being insulting. keep making that assumption.
ask yourself why Will Smith was never actually charged. If you're right, and that's how our criminal justice system works, we know Will slapped him. We know it wasn't some consensual thing. solid evidence there. So why wasn't Will charged?
Was it because, hey, no crime was committed?
no. there were no charges because the expenditure of resources (aka wasting everybody's time for a trial that everyone knows will fail to get a conviction.) You were right. the DA has prosecutorial discretion. meaning they're the ones who make the decision. but that power also includes deciding when not to prosecute.
"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories:"