American actor Jussie Smollett claimed to have been the victim of a hate crime. His story was inherently implausible – that two MAGA hat wearing homophobic white supremists saw him in the early hours of downtown Chicago – a deeply Democratic party voting area populated with many African Americans – and beat him up while it was snowing.
Naturally, Kamala Harris immediately bought the tale:
While much of the media fell for his story, the Chicago police investigated, and discovered that the pair of attackers were in fact two Nigerian brothers Smollett had paid to stage the whole thing so that he could pretend to be a victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime.
Smollett was arrested in February 2019 and indicted the following month on 16 felony counts for filing a false police report. The charges were later dropped, however, by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which announced a nonprosecution agreement that Smollett would instead turn his bond over to the city and engage in community service. At that time the, Attorney’s Office said it believed “this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case.” A public outcry resulted in the charges being pursued again.
Smollett was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 150 days in jail. However, he got appeal bail thereafter.
The latest development in this saga is that the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that Smollett had wrongfully been charged as a result of the nonprosecution agreement with the Cook County state’s attorney. Notably, the court did not dispute Smollett’s guilt.
The Illinois Supreme Court said in the judgement:
“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”
“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 honour agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.”
Author adminPosted on Categories Criminal law