Crime & Law

Illinois Supreme Court Overturns Jussie Smollett’s Hoax Hate Crime Convictions

Jussie Smollett pleads not guilty at Leighton Criminal Court Building, Thursday, March 14, 2019. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Pool / Chicago Tribune)

The Illinois Supreme Court has tossed out actor Jussie Smollett’s disorderly conduct convictions, ruling prosecutors improperly charged him a second time after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office initially dismissed the charges alleging he orchestrated an elaborate hate crime hoax against himself.

The court ruled Thursday that special prosecutor Dan Webb and his team had no standing to charge the former “Empire” star after Foxx and her office initially resolved the case through an agreement which saw Smollett forfeit the $10,000 he paid in bond and complete 16 hours of community service.

“We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation,” the high court wrote, “and we therefore reverse defendant’s conviction.”

The ruling marks the latest dramatic turn in the high-profile case that garnered widespread national attention.

Smollett claimed to be the victim of an attack by two men near his Streeterville apartment in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2019. He told investigators his attackers yelled racist and homophobic slurs before they hit him in his face, poured a chemical substance on him and wrapped a rope around his neck.

Following an investigation, Chicago police determined Smollett had hired the men — brothers Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo — to stage the attack. He was then charged by Cook County prosecutors in February 2019.

But just weeks later, Foxx’s office dismissed those charges in a surprise move that sparked swift backlash against her office. The actor’s legal team argued this dismissal was part of a deal between Smollett and prosecutors in which the charges were dropped after he agreed to forfeit the $10,000 he paid in bond and complete 16 hours of community service.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that this deal between Foxx’s office and Smollett constituted an “agreement” by which the case should have been fully resolved.

The court pointed to a press release from Foxx’s office which stated that if Smollett had not agreed to turn over his bond payment and complete the community service, then “the charges would not have been dropped.”

The court wrote that “there simply is no credible argument” that the dismissal of the initial charges “was not entered as part of an agreement with defendant.”

Later in 2019 — amid continued calls for an investigation into Foxx’s handling of the case — a judge appointed veteran litigator Dan Webb as a special prosecutor to investigate both the Smollett incident and what happened within Foxx’s office that led to the first charges being dismissed.

Webb identified “substantial abuses of discretion” and a “major failure" of operations in Foxx’s office’s handling of the Smollett case, and filed renewed charges against Smollett in early 2020.

Smollett was subsequently tried in 2021 and convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct. He was ordered to serve the first 150 days of a 30-month probation sentence in jail. Smollett served just six days of his jail sentence before he was released pending appeal.

At his sentencing in March 2022, Cook County Judge James Linn told Smollett he had “destroyed your life as you knew it.”

“I know that there is nothing I will do here today that will come close to the damage you have already done to your own life,” Linn said.

Smollett then shouted back at Linn after the judge issued his sentence, saying he was innocent and “not suicidal,” before he was led from the courtroom, holding one arm up into the air.

“I am innocent,” he yelled as he left the court in custody. “I could have said I was guilty a long time ago.”

“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,” Smollett’s attorney Nenye Uche said in a statement. “Ultimately, we are pleased that the rule of law was the big winner today. We are thankful to the Illinois Supreme Court for restoring order to Illinois’ criminal law jurisprudence.”

Webb in a statement Thursday said he was “disappointed” by the court’s decision. He said that the ruling “has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence” but instead was “only possible because of the unprecedented resolution of Mr. Smollett’s initial case” by Foxx’s office.

“The Illinois Supreme Court did not find any error with the overwhelming evidence presented at trial that Mr. Smollett orchestrated a fake hate crime and reported it to the Chicago Police Department as a real hate crime, or the jury’s unanimous verdict that Mr. Smollett was guilty of five counts of felony disorderly conduct,” Webb said in the statement. “In fact, Mr. Smollett did not even challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him in his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.”

Smollett continues to maintain his innocence more than five years after the January 2019 incident. His attorneys have argued double jeopardy should have applied when a special prosecutor filed renewed charges against him after Cook County prosecutors dropped their initial criminal case.

“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 wrote in its ruling Thursday. “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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