In the latest development in actor Jussie Smollett now years-long legal skirmish, he is asking the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the “disorderly conduct conviction” ruling the appeals court handed down.
For a review of the timeline: in 2019, Smollett alleged he was a victim of a hate crime after being targeted because he was Black and gay. Police investigated further, and Smollett was charged with 16 felonies, accusing him of staging a fake hate crime against himself and lying about it to police.”
A week later, those charges were dropped. A judge then ruled that “the deal to drop the initial charges was invalid.” A special prosecutor was appointed “to determine if new charges should be filed.” The special prosecutor’s decision: yes.
New charges were then brought against Smollett, and he “was convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021 and was sentenced to 150 days in jail.” He was only in custody for six days before being released while his case was appealed.
In December of 2023, the Illinois Appellate Court, consisting of a panel of three judges, upheld the conviction. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court held “that there was no evidence prosecutors had agreed not to prosecute Smollett further when the initial charges against him were dropped in exchange for him forfeiting his $10,000 bond and performing 16 hours of community service.”
However under Appellate Justice Freddrenna Lyle’s dissenting argument, “it was ‘fundamentally unfair’ to appoint a special prosecutor to charge Smollett a second time after he’d entered an agreement he believed would end the case.”
In their most recent filing, Smollett’s attorneys argued as such, claiming the conviction was in violation of his fifth amendment protections from double jeopardy, wherein a person is not legally allowed to be punished twice for the same crime.
“What should have been a straightforward case has been complicated by the intersection of politics and public outrage,” wrote Smollett’s attorneys.
What’s next for Smollett? Now he has to finish the other 144 days of his jail sentence. The state Supreme Court can either decide to hear the case or allow the lower court’s decision to stand. Gil Soffer, legal analyst for ABC7, doesn’t believe Smollett has too many additional options after filing the appeal.
“The Illinois Supreme Court process is really the end of the road for him and it’s not likely to give him much success,” stated Soffer. “It’s pretty hard to get a hearing before the Supreme Court and even harder to win ultimately when you’re there.”