Illinois Supreme Court reverses actor Jussie Smollett's conviction
Actor Jussie Smollett listens as his sentence is read at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, March 10, 2022, in Chicago. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool, File)
The Illinois Supreme Court announced Thursday that it had overturned the 2021 felony conviction of Jussie Smollett, a television actor who became even more of a household name five years ago after falsely reporting that he had been the victim of a violent hate crime.
A jury convicted Smollett, a former actor on the USA Network’s show “Empire,” in 2021 of five counts of disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine along with $120,106 in restitution to the city of Chicago. (By the fifth season of “Empire,” the actor was earning $100,000 per episode, The Washington Post has reported.)
The Justices didn’t deny that Smollett, a Black man who identifies as gay, had indeed staged a hate crime and publicly lied about being attacked. They wrote that they overturned the case because of a procedural issue—a due process violation—during the years of high-profile legal wrangling.
“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 court wrote in its decision. “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.”
