(Headline USA) The Illinois Supreme Court overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax conviction this week, arguing the conviction was based on a faulty second prosecution by the state.
Smollett was found guilty in 2021 of staging an attack against himself in Chicago and then lying about it to authorities.
The charges against him were initially dropped in 2019 when Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx reached an agreement with Smollett’s attorneys to drop the case if Smollett paid $10,000 and did community service.
A special prosecutor with Cook County, Dan Webb, then intervened to continue the case, charging him again after finding “substantial abuses of discretion” and a “major failure” of operations in Foxx’s office’s handling of the Smollett case.
An Illinois appeals court upheld the verdict last year, siding with Cook County.
However, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down that decision this week, acknowledging that while many people were “dissatisfied” with the original settlement, it was “unjust” for the state to continue to pursue the case.
“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,” the court wrote. “We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse defendant’s conviction.”
Smollett’s attorney Nenye Uche praised the decision for “restoring order” to Illinois’s criminal justice system.
“This was not a prosecution based on facts, rather it was a vindictive persecution, and such a proceeding has no place in our criminal justice system,” Uche said in a statement. “Ultimately, we are pleased that the rule of law was the big winner today.”
Smollett was sentenced in 2022 to 150 days in jail but served only six days before getting out.
The actor was also given 30 months of probation and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution.
