The supreme court in the US state of Illinois has overturned the conviction of actor Jussie Smollett, who was found to have staged a hate crime against himself five years ago.
The star of the television show ‘Empire’, who is black and gay, was found guilty in 2021 of faking a racist and homophobic attack and lying to the police.
Smollett claimed in 2019 he was assaulted in Chicago by two white men who yelled racial and anti-gay slurs and threw a noose over his head. The report prompted a massive search for the suspects before investigators announced that they believed the incident was a hoax. The suspects testified at the trial that the actor paid them $3,500 to stage the attack.
The state’s attorney however agreed to drop the charges if Smollett paid $10,000 and did community service. The ruling attracted significant public criticism and was described as unjust.
A special prosecutor later charged Smollett again, leading to his trial and conviction on five counts of disorderly conduct for setting up the attack. The actor was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months of probation and ordered to pay more than $130,000 in restitution. He served six days of the sentence before being released pending appeal.
On Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court cited Smollett’s second prosecution as the main reason for overturning the conviction.
Alluding to the fact that Smollett’s original charges had been dropped, the court stated that while “many people” had been dissatisfied, the state’s responsibility was “to honor the agreements it makes with defendants.”
“We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse defendant’s conviction,” the court wrote.
The prosecution said it disagreed with the decision, claiming that the ruling “has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence,” and insisting that “overwhelming evidence” showed that Smollett “orchestrated a fake hate crime.”
The actor has maintained the attack was “no hoax” and that he was in fact the victim of a hate crime in Chicago.