The Illinois Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of former Empire star Jussie Smollett for staging a hate crime.
The court reasoned that because the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office agreed to drop charges against the actor as part of a negotiated deal, they couldn’t bring the same charges against him for a second time.
According to CBS News, Smollett appealed to the state’s highest court in September, seeking to challenge his trial court conviction on five counts of disorderly conduct and an appellate court ruling that upheld it.
“Today we resolve a question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants,” the Illinois Supreme Court wrote in its ruling.
“Specifically, we address whether a dismissal of a case by nolle prosequi allows the State to bring a second prosecution when the dismissal was entered as part of an agreement with the defendant and the defendant has performed his part of the bargain. We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we, therefore, reverse the defendant’s conviction.”
Smollett was convicted of falsely reporting a 2019 hate crime against him in 2021.
The actor, who is Black and gay, claimed attackers hurled racist and homophobic slurs before placing a noose around his neck near his Chicago apartment.
Authorities investigated the crime but later accused Smollett of staging the incident, with brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo testifying he paid them $3,500 to execute the hoax.
Before he could be convicted, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped 16 charges against him, which is the basis of the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling.
Foxx, who stepped away from the case after communicating with a relative of Smollett during the investigation, has said she supports an independent review of how she and her office handled the situation.
That happened in August 2019, when Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed former U.S. attorney Dan Webb as special prosecutor.
Webb led the prosecution in the second round of Smollett’s case, which resulted in Smollett’s conviction on December 9, 2021, of five out of six disorderly conduct charges.
He was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months of probation, and ordered to pay over $130,000 in restitution. Smollett only served six days of that sentence before he was released while he appealed his case.
Then in December, an Illinois Appellate Court upheld Smollett’s conviction, with prosecutors arguing that there was no agreement to drop further charges when the initial ones were dismissed.
But Appellate Justice Freddrenna Lyle dissented in that ruling, stating that appointing a special prosecutor to charge Smollett again after he believed the case was settled was “fundamentally unfair.”
In reversing Smollett’s conviction, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed with the defense attorney that the special prosecutor’s decision to file new charges violated the actor’s rights after the initial case was dropped, and he agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond.
“It defies credulity to believe that defendant would agree to forfeit $10,000 with the understanding that [prosecutors] could simply reindict him the following day,” the court’s ruling stated.
The Illinois Supreme Court sent Smollett’s case back to the trial court to officially dismiss the charges.
“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust,” the opinion stated.
“Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.”
