In 2021, former Empire actor Jussie Smollett was convicted for falsely reporting a 2019 hate crime. He claimed to have been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack. Now, however, the Illinois Supreme Court has overturned the conviction after Jussie Smollett took his case to them.
As shared via WGNTV, the Illinois Supreme Court wrote that their decision was made as a result of Smollett’s second prosecution. They explained this in their ruling, as shared below:
“Today we resolve a question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants. 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 defendant’s conviction,” the Illinois Supreme Court stated.
In order to stage the racist and homophobic attack, Smollett, who is both Black and gay, is said to have hired two brothers that he knew from the set of Empire for $3,500. They used racist and homophobic slurs against him before putting a noose around his neck. This was revealed via testimony at Smollett’s trial, and the actor was ultimately found guilty of five counts of disorderly conduct as a result in 2021.
Prior to this, however, his initial 16 charges were dropped in 2019 by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Smollett made an agreement to forfeit his $10,000 in bail in favor of doing 15 hours of community service. Because he held up his end of this deal, the court should not have been able to perform a second prosecution against him. When launching the appeal against the second prosecution, Smollett only served six days in jail of which he was sentenced 150 days.
The court noted that while “many people” were dissatisfied about Smollett’s initial charges being dropped, it added that it “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 detrimentally relied.”
Special Prosecutor Dan Webb issued his own statement on the matter, and he noted that “today’s ruling has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence.” He summarized the events that led to this ruling as follows:
“Rather, today’s decision is only possible because of the unprecedented resolution of Mr. Smollett’s initial case by the Cook County State’s Attorneys’ Office (CCSAO) in March 2019, which the Illinois Supreme Court determined barred Mr. Smollett from any further prosecution. The Illinois Supreme Court reached this decision notwithstanding the fact that the CCSAO dismissed the initial Smollett case via a nolle prosequi, which does not bar re-prosecution under Illinois law, and Mr. Smollett’s own lawyers told the public immediately following the dismissal of his initial case in March 2019 that there was ‘no deal’ with the CCSAO.”
Webb was made Special Prosecutor following the initial work done by Kim Foxx, though everything happened after Smollett was able to complete his community service. As such, Webb ends his statement with the following:
“Today’s ruling does not change how deeply proud I am of the work my Special Prosecutor’s office accomplished; nor does it undermine the jury’s verdict, and most importantly, it does not clear Jussie Smollett’s name—he is not innocent.”
As such, we’ll have to see if there are any additional updates to this situation. Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for more news regarding Jussie Smollett and his newly-overturned conviction as we have it.