Jussie Smollett’s Conviction for Hate Crime Hoax Reversed
The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Jussie Smollett's 2021 conviction, saying prosecutors had no right to retry him.
The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction on charges of disorderly conduct for lying to police about being the victim of an anti-gay hate crime.
Smollett’s legal team had previously appealed the actor’s 2021 conviction on the grounds that he had been unjustly prosecuted after having already reached a plea deal in which Smollett would avoid jail time.
They argued that prosecuting him again for the same crime after he had agreed to a non-prosecution agreement with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office constituted double jeopardy, violating his right to due process.
The Illinois Supreme Court sided with Smollett, finding that the 42-year-old actor had been the target of vindictive prosecution, based on outcry over the seeming lenience of his punishment.
The court’s decision focused largely on the way the case was prosecuted, and never called into question the underlying facts of whether Smollett had perpetrated a hoax, reports The New York Times.
In 2019, Smollett, a then-star of the Fox drama Empire, claimed he had been the victim of a hate crime while in Chicago. He said two men had injured him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs, with one shouting, ‘This is MAGA country.”
He also said that the men beat him, poured an “unknown chemical substance” on him, and tied a rope around his neck before fleeing the scene.
The Chicago police determined Smollett had orchestrated the attack, hiring two brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to carry it out.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office initially indicted Smollett on 16 charges related to making a false report to police, but a month later, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped the charges, striking a deal with Smollett’s lawyers in which he agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond and perform 15 hours of community service, in exchange for no jail time.
There was widespread outrage — nationally from conservatives angry over Smollett’s attempt to malign Trump supporters and locally from citizens angered over Smollett’s actions.
A retired judge from Illinois subsequently petitioned the court to assign a special prosecutor to get the “whole truth” of what happened, and Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney, sought to prosecute Smollett a second time.
Webb secured a new indictment against Smollett, and tried the case, with a jury unanimously finding Smollett guilty on five felony counts of disorderly conduct. Smollett was sentenced to five months in jail but only served six days of the term before being released on appeal.
During sentencing, Judge James Linn reprimanded Smollett, telling him his actions did harm to victims of real hate crimes. Linn also directed Smollett to pay more than $120,000 in restitution for the cost of the Chicago Police Department’s investigation into the incident.
“Today we resolve a question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants,” Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Rochford wrote in the opinion, with which four other justices concurred. “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. 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.”
Webb said that his office disagreed with the court’s reasoning and noted that the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision did not dispute the fact that Smollett orchestrated the hate crime hoax. “Most importantly, it does not clear Jussie Smollett’s name — he is not innocent,” he said.
Smollett still faces a civil lawsuit from the city of Chicago demanding more than $130,000 to cover the cost of the police investigation. That suit, paused during the criminal trial and the appeals process, is likely to start up once again now that a resolution has been reached regarding his criminal liability.
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