Empire star Jussie Smollett’s controversial conviction on charges that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself and lied to police has been overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court.
The court ruled that the 42-year-old should not have been charged because of a non-prosecution agreement he had entered into with the Cook County attorney’s office.
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.
Cook County state’s attorney initially dropped the 16 charges of disorderly conduct against Smollett after he performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond – closing the case.
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 ruling – that there had been a non-prosecution agreement – 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.”
Smollett’s attorneys previously argued that the actor had been victimized by a racist and politicized justice system.
In a statement released on Thursday, Dan Webb the special prosecutor appointed to the case said that his office was “disappointed” in the decision to overturn Smollett’s conviction over the “fake hate crime.”
“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s factual and legal reasoning which upends long-standing Illinois precedent,” he said.
“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.”
