The Illinois supreme court on Thursday overturned the conviction of disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, who was previously found guilty of staging a hoax hate crime against himself and then falsely reporting it to police.
The court ruled that a special prosecutor’s decision to retry him in the case despite the Cook County state attorney’s office having previously dropped the charges against Smollett was a violation of his rights.
“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 court ruled. “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.”
Smollett made a false report to Chicago police in January 2019, when he claimed he had been attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs at him and wrapped a rope around his neck, prosecutors said. He told police the assault occurred in the middle of a frigid Chicago night while he was out picking up a Subway sandwich.
Police initially investigated the alleged incident, which Smollett claimed happened in the upscale neighborhood of Streeterville, but ultimately shifted focus to probing whether Smollett paid brothers Ola and Abel Osundairo to stage an attack after first investigating the brothers as persons of interest.
Smollett orchestrated the fake hate crime, paying the two men $3,500 to help him, prosecutors said.
But after initially charging Smollett with disorderly conduct, Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges against him, noting that he had forfeited his $10,000 bond and had done community service.
After the decision to drop the charges drew significant backlash from the public, former Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed former U.S. attorney Dan Webb as a special prosecutor in the case. Webb eventually refiled charges, but Smollett’s attorneys have now successfully argued that the new charges amounted to a violation of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prevents an individual from being prosecuted twice for the same crime.
“It defies credulity to believe that defendant would agree to forfeit $10,000 with the understanding that CCSAO could simply reindict him the following day,” the state supreme court wrote.
Smollett was previously found guilty of the refiled charges. Judge James Linn sentenced Smollett to 150 days in jail and 30 months of probation in March 2022 after a nearly seven-hour hearing. He was ordered to pay restitution of just over $120,000 and a $25,000 criminal fine after being found guilty of five counts of disorderly conduct in December 2021.
Smollett never served any time, however, as he was released on a personal recognizance bond of $150,000 pending the result of the appeal process. That meant he was not required to put down any money but agreed to appear in court when required.
During the sentencing hearing, Linn called Smollett a charlatan who pretended to be a victim of a hate crime because he wanted attention, calling the hoax “premeditated to the extreme.”
The judge said the evidence against the actor was “overwhelming.”
“You’ve been lying and lying and lying about this case,” Linn said.
Webb, the special prosecutor, expressed disappointment over the state supreme court’s ruling on Thursday and noted the ruling “has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence.”
“We are disappointed in the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision today to overturn Jussie Smollett’s convictions and sentence, including the award of over $120,000 in restitution to the City of Chicago for its overtime expenses in investigating Mr. Smollett’s fake hate crime,” he said. “We respectfully disagree with the Court’s factual and legal reasoning which upends long-standing Illinois precedent.”
“Indeed, the Special Prosecutor’s brief to the Illinois Supreme Court was replete with Illinois case law that would not preclude a second, new prosecution following a dismissal without prejudice via nolle prosequi. Even the Illinois Supreme Court agreed in its opinion that its holding today was not explicit in earlier Illinois decisions,” he added,