The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Jussie Smollett's 2021 conviction for an alleged racist and homophobic attack on him in 2019, ruling Thursday (Nov. 21) that his rights had been violated when a special prosecutor intervened to retry him despite Cook County The State Attorney initially dropped all charges against him.
“We know 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 unfair,” the court wrote in its ruling, according to The Chicago Tribune. “However, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any criminal case would be a finding by this court that the state was not bound to honor agreements upon which the people relied to their detriment.”
The ruling comes more than five years after the singer-actor first reported that two men attacked him, yelled racist and homophobic slurs and put a noose around his neck in downtown Chicago. Two years later, a jury found Smollett – who is black and gay – guilty of five of six disorderly conduct charges for allegedly lying to police about the incident, with prosecutors accusing him of hiring the two men to attack him because he was unhappy with his employer's response to hate mail he had received, according to the Associated Press.
In addition to 30 months of probation, Smollett — who has maintained his innocence — was ordered to pay $130,160 in restitution and sentenced to 150 days in jail — which he never served because of the lengthy appeals process that has taken place in recent years. A lower court previously upheld the convictions in a split 2-1 decision, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear the actor's appeal — and on Thursday, it ruled in his favor.
Bulletin board reached out to Smollett's attorney and rep for comment.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/jussie-smollett-conviction-overturned-staged-attack-1235835418/
