In a stunning ruling Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction of actor Jussie Smollett for an alleged hoax hate crime, a move that will spare the former “Empire” star a five-month jail sentence.
Smollett’s case garnered national attention almost from the moment he called police to report that he'd been attacked near his downtown apartment on a frigid night in 2019, targeted by two strangers who shouted racist, homophobic slurs at the openly gay, Black actor. The furor only increased a month later, when the actor was charged with staging the hoax beating, and surged again when the state's attorney's office abruptly dropped the case a few weeks later in a controversial and unorthodox deal.
Smollett gave up his $10,000 bond and performed 15 hours of community service in exchange for prosecutors dismissing the case. That agreement, Justice Elizabeth M. Rochford wrote in the 5-0 opinion, should have prevented Smollett from facing charges for the same alleged crimes a year later, when a special prosecutor re-investigated the case.
A second indictment and Smollett’s guilty verdict in a 2022 trial violated Smollett's due process rights, the court ruled. A deal, the court ruled, is a deal, and Smollett will now avoid serving a five-month jail sentence and repaying the nearly $130,000 Chicago Police spent on overtime to investigate his claims.
"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," Rochford wrote in the 32-page ruling. Two justices, who did not attend oral arguments, did not weigh in.
"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 served six days of a five-month jail sentence he received after his conviction, before being released to wait out his appeals. An appeals court last year upheld Smollett’s sentence on felony counts related to lying to police. His sentence also included two years of probation and an order to repay the city of Chicago nearly $130,000 spent on overtime for police working a case. Before the guilty verdict, the city had filed a civil lawsuit against Smollett to recover those costs, a case that was put on hold during his appeals.
While the ruling made no findings about whether Smollett was guilty or not, at a news conference Thursday in Chicago, Smollett’s attorneys said the case was a vindication of their client.
Attorney Nenye Uche said the case resembled those in “developing nations” and said there was “no evidence linking [Smollett] to anything."
“Prosecutions should be based on facts, not vindictiveness,” Uche told reporters. “This was a vindictive persecution, not prosecution. … [The court] is not run by public opinion.”
Special prosecutor Dan Webb, who was appointed to re-investigate Smollett’s case amid public outcry over the sudden dismissal of the first batch of charges, said Thursday he was disappointed in the court's ruling. In a statement, he noted the ruling hinged on the deal the state's attorney's office brokered to drop the earlier case — not errors by his team.
"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," Webb said in a lengthy statement.
Special Prosecutor Dan Webb walks to the media pen after Judge Michael Toomin ordered the release of his report, which details how Kim Foxx and her staff handled the decision to drop charges against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, at the Cook County Juvenile Center on Dec. 16, 2021.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Webb's team also investigated Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office for misconduct in the handling of the case. He ultimately produced a 60-page report that found nothing criminal, though he did fault Foxx and her staff for ethical and procedural lapses.
With only nine days before she leaves office, Foxx claimed Thursday's ruling offered her office a measure of vindication.
"We have spent five years and millions of dollars on the re-prosecution of someone for a low-level felony," Foxx told the Chicago Sun-Times, noting that her office's handling of the case was used as a cudgel by critics of her broader reform agenda.
"This case was bigger than what Jussie Smollett did," she added.
Foxx won a second term even after Smollett's case became a topic of national outcry. While the ruling means Smollett will not have to serve further jail time, he has already suffered the decimation of a once-promising acting career.
On the night of the staged attack, Smollett had been at the peak of his career, starring in a groundbreaking role as a Black, gay character on the hit TV series “Empire." At the same time, he was recording and touring as a musician.
But Smollett would become a household name in the weeks after he called police to report he had been attacked by two men on the street as he walked home from a downtown Subway restaurant on a frigid January night. In the years that followed, Smollett’s career cratered. His character was written off “Empire,” and he became a punch line on late-night comedy shows.
At his sentencing hearing in 2022, Judge James Linn observed that Smollett had endured severe punishment even before he handed down the restitution and jail time.
“You’ve destroyed your life as you knew it,” Linn said. “There is nothing any sentencing judge could do compared to the damage you’ve already done. … Your very name is a verb for lying. I can’t imagine anything worse than that.”
From the day of his arrest, Smollett has maintained his innocence, including during two days that he spent on the witness stand at his 2021 trial. The actor sparred gamely with Webb, a former federal prosecutor better known for his withering cross-examination of Adm. John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair.
At Smollett's sentencing, when Judge Linn ordered him taken from the courtroom to jail, Smollett rose from his seat and declared: “I did not do this. … I am innocent.”
In an interview last month to promote a new film Smollett co-wrote and directed, he remained defiant and claimed to have spent about $3 million on his defense — even though it might have made more sense to have served out his time.
“I don’t want to have a felony on my record for something that I didn’t do,” Smollett said. “That’s what we’re fighting for. I know that on the surface it probably seems like, 'Why doesn’t he just serve the time? Why doesn’t he just let this go?' It would be easier if I had in fact done this to say that I did it.
“I’m a grown man, and something happened. I can’t tell exactly what did happen, but I can tell you what did not happen, and that’s what I have to sit on. No matter how much people are yelling in my face, saying, ‘You’re a liar, you’re a liar, you’re a liar.’ No, I’m not. No, I’m not. I don’t want them to believe that. But if that is what they believe, that’s on you.”
The public, and police sources quoted anonymously in news outlets such as TMZ, seemed skeptical almost from the moment Smollett made his report.
He told police that he had been walking home after a late-night trip to Subway, when two men began punching him, hung a noose around his neck and squirted him with bleach while shouting racist, homophobic slurs at him.
Police stitched together surveillance camera footage to track down his two alleged assailants, brothers Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, who would go on to be star witnesses for the prosecution.
Smollett, they testified, had paid them $3,500 to fake an attack because he was unhappy with his salary on “Empire” and disappointed that the production team had not been more concerned about threatening letters the studio had received.
After giving a tearful interview about the attack on "Good Morning America," Smollett was arrested for making false statements to police six days later.
Those charges were dropped by Foxx’s office just a month after they were filed, with Smollett walking out of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, seemingly for the last time, just weeks after he was charged.
Months later, a judge appointed Webb as special prosecutor to reinvestigate Smollett’s case and examine how Foxx’s office handled the decision to drop the prosecution, with Smollett agreeing to give his $10,000 bond to the city with no admission of guilt.
Webb's report faulted Foxx and her staff for abusing prosecutorial discretion and possible ethical lapses. Then, almost exactly a year after Smollett walked out of court, a special grand jury handed up a six-count indictment against him.
Uche, Smollett's attorney, said that there was no justification for the second prosecution and praised the court's ruling.
"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," he said. "Ultimately, we are pleased that the rule of law was the big winner today."
Read the full ruling:
