According to TMZ, Miami-Dade prosecutors dropped the felony battery-by-strangulation charge against Rick Ross and are moving forward with two misdemeanor battery counts. He surrendered to Miami Beach police in early October over an alleged domestic violence incident at his Star Island home, and he is set to be arraigned Friday.
A felony is a subscription tier, not a fact. The state subscribes you to the premium plan on day one, then downgrades you to basic when the cameras lose interest. NBC Miami says he's set to be arraigned on the misdemeanor battery charge, and the state's reason for the downgrade is the only quote in this whole story that means what it says: insufficient evidence.
The arrest was a press event. The charge drop is a press event. Both free. That is the business model. The mugshot is the trailer, the arraignment is the review, the downgrade is the extended cut nobody asked for. A regular person who gets a felony battery charge reduced to a misdemeanor calls it what it is, the first charge was never supported. Ross gets to call it a break, and the two misdemeanors get to call themselves the whole story.
The brand survives the charge drop the way the charge survived the evidence. That is the trick. The empire does not wobble, it just quietly moves the felony to the back of the store where it is still on the shelf but nobody talks about it.
YOUR TURN: Should the state have filed the misdemeanors first, or was the felony just a free trial nobody cancelled?
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