Empire star, Jussie Smollett’s conviction for orchestrating a hate crime hoax has been overturned.
On Thursday, November 21, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the decision due to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx initially dropping all charges against him before the special prosecutor decided to retry him.
This choice violated his rights, the high court ruled.
The actor, who is Black and gay, claimed two Nigerian-American brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs, and tossed a noose around his neck in downtown Chicago, while he was filming the television drama in 2019.
The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned a conviction against Empire star Jussie Smollett, who prosecutors accused of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019 in Chicago.
In 2021, Smollett, who is black and gay, was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021.
The actor, who is Black and gay, claimed two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs, and tossed a noose around his neck in downtown Chicago, while he was filming the television drama in 2019.
However, a special prosecutor appointed to look into why the case was dropped later concluded there were “substantial abuses of discretion” in the state’s attorney office during the earlier round, and a grand jury subsequently restored charges against Smollett in 2020.
Testimony at his trial alleged Smollett paid $3,500 to two men he knew from Empire to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said he told them what slurs to shout and to yell that Smollett was in “MAGA country,” a reference to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
Prosecutors alleged the actor staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio’s response to hate mail he received while filming Empire.
In his own testimony Smollett said that “there was no hoax” and that he was the victim of a hate crime in his downtown Chicago neighborhood. He has always maintained his innocence.
Despite this, a jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail, six of which he served before he was freed pending appeal, 30 months of probation, and ordered to pay about $130,000 in restitution.
In December 2023 an appeals court upheld the conviction, declaring that no one promised Smollett he wouldn’t face a fresh prosecution after accepting the original deal.
The Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in March 2024, with the shock ruling returned on Thursday.
“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 said.
“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.”
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