Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett made his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court Tuesday regarding felony disorderly conduct charges surrounding a hate crime hoax. NBC Chicago’s Charlie Wojciechowski reports.
NOTE: The video in the player above is from September 2024 when the Supreme Court heard Smollett's appeal
The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned the criminal conviction of actor Jussie Smollett, accused of faking a 2019 attack in Chicago.
Attorneys for Smollett argued that a previous non-prosecution agreement with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, along with the decision of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to drop the initial charges, meant that his conviction should be overturned, and the court agreed in its ruling.
"Today we resolve a question about the State's responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants," Smollett's attorney Mark Geragos said in a statement. "We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse defendant's conviction."
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Supreme Court Justices Neville, Overstreet, Holder White and O’Brien concurred in the opinion, written by Justice Elizabeth Rochford.
Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis and Justice Joy Cunningham abstained from ruling in the case.
"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," Special Prosecutor Dan K. Webb said in a statement. "We respectfully disagree with the Court’s factual and legal reasoning which upends long-standing Illinois precedent."
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Smollett’s legal team had moved to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds, but the trial court denied both motions. His legal team also argued that he had entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, but again the trial judge denied the motion, according to the court’s ruling Thursday.
During the appeal, Smollett’s attorney, Nenye Uche, argued that a previous agreement with the State's Attorney’s office should have kept a trial from happening in the first place.
Uche told justices that Smollett and his previous attorneys had struck an agreement with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx that would have him surrender his $10,000 bond and perform community service in return for the actor not being prosecuted.
"Prosecutorial agreements that induce a defendant’s specific performance should be enforced,” Uche said. “Irrespective of how unpopular the defendant is in the public eye, a deal’s a deal."
But the deputy special prosecutor in the case maintained the deal not to prosecute didn’t go far enough and allowed Special Prosecutor Dan Webb to convene a grand jury and file a new case against the “Empire” star.
“Only a clear, expressed dismissal of charges with prejudice bars subsequent charges in a nolle pross situation,” Sean Wieber said.
Prosecutors also held that Smollett had not paid the city of Chicago more than $130,000 in fines and restitution related to the case, meaning he hadn't fulfilled his obligations under a non-prosecution agreement.
The court found that Smollett’s case was indeed subject to the double jeopardy clause in the U.S. Constitution, and that his agreement with the State’s Attorney’s Office should have been honored.
They cited “terrible policy consequences” of adopting prosecutors’ stance on filing the charges again, and also echoed previous rulings that reversing course on non-prosecution agreements would “comport neither with ordinary contract principles nor with the more expansive notions of fundamental fairness that control the relations between a state and its citizens.”
