BREAKING NEWSActor Jussie Smollett's Staged Hate Crime Conviction Overturned by Illinois Supreme Court
Jussie Smollett was sentenced in 2022 to 150 days in county jail, plus 30 months of probation and $130,000 in restitution.
Jussie Smollett is in the clear.
On Thursday, November 21, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the Empire actor's five felony convictions of disorderly conduct after allegedly staging a hate crime against himself.
In 2024, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear Jussie Smollett's appeal.
In 2022, the star was sentenced to 150 days in county jail, 30 months of probation and $130,000 in restitution for his alleged crimes. After the state appellate court rejected his appeal in 2023, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear him out in 2024.
Legal issues for Smollett began in January 2019, when he told police he was attacked outside of his Chicago apartment by men using racial and homophobic slurs. The Underground alum even claimed the individuals placed a noose around his neck during the assault.
Jussie Smollett was accused of paying two acquaintances to stage the assault against him.
After an investigation of the incident was conducted, authorities accused Smollett of paying two people to stage the attack. Smollett was then charged with a Class 4 felony for filing a false police report by grand jury.
By March 2019, his charges were dropped after Smollett's legal team made a deal with the prosecution, requiring the celeb to complete community service and forfeit a $10,000 bond. The state of Illinois then conducted a separate investigation with a special prosecutor, who then indicted Smollett in February 2020. By November 2021, Smollett was on trial for the hate crime hoax and was found guilty in December.
The Chicago Tribune shared the court's opinion on Thursday, November 21, which focused on how the special prosecutor’s decision to retry Smollett violated 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 judges conclusion read. “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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Jussie Smollett was charged with a Class 4 felony by grand jury for filing a false police report.
After the court announced its decision, Special Prosecutor Dan Webb shared his reaction in a statement obtained by OK!.
“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. We respectfully disagree with the Court’s factual and legal reasoning which upends long-standing Illinois precedent," the legal expert shared.
“Make no mistake — today’s ruling has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence. 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. In fact, Mr. Smollett did not even challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him in his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court,” Webb added.
Though Webb insisted Smollett is guilty, in 2022, the star claimed he did not lie about the attack. While on Sway's SiriusXM show at the time, Smollett said feels he got screwed in court.
"If I had done this, I would be a piece of s---," he stated. "That's not really questionable."
He doubled down, adding that doing it would have been like "I had stuck my fist in the pain of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years."
"It would mean I stuck my fist in the fears of the LGBTQ community all over the world," he said. "I'm not that motherf-----. Never have been. Don't need to be."
The court stated, 'We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case,' in their opinion.
As for claims he staged the crime to help his career he replied, "I was on the up and up. I was coming from New York, from doing a table read for my dream role in a Broadway show."
"It would be no reason for me to do some dumb, corny s--- like that," Smollett continued. "But people are going to believe what they believe, and what I have to do is, I have to keep working."
