The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned a conviction against actor Jussie Smollett, who prosecutors accused of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019 in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Smollett, who is black and gay, was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021.<\/p>\n
He had claimed two men targeted him in a hate-crime, yelling racial slurs and putting a noose around his neck while he was walking down the street near his apartment.<\/p>\n
Two men testified that the Empire television show star paid them $3,500 (KSh. 456.1 K) to stage the attack.<\/p>\n
Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail, but served only six days before he was freed pending appeal.<\/p>\n
The state Supreme Court sided with Smollett\u2019s attorneys, who argued in their appeal that Smollett should not have been charged by a special prosecutor after the Cook County State Attorney\u2019s Office dropped charges in exchange for community service.<\/p>\n
The decision sparked an uproar from many, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said who said Smollett was \u201clet off scot-free, with no sense of accountability for the moral and ethical wrong of his actions\u201d.<\/p>\n
A grand jury later re-established the charges after a special prosecutor took on the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d the state Supreme Court wrote in its opinion on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNevertheless, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Smollett\u2019s trial, prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with a television studio\u2019s response to hate mail he received.<\/p>\n
Smollett said the attack was \u201cno hoax\u201d and that he was the victim of a hate crime in Chicago.<\/p>\n
But the two men he accused of perpetrating the crime \u2013 two brothers, one of whom Smollett said he met through the Empire show \u2013 said Smollett hired them and paid them with a cheque.<\/p>\n
The post \u2018Empire\u2019 actor conviction overturned by Supreme court<\/a> first appeared on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post \u2018Empire\u2019 actor conviction overturned by Supreme court<\/a> appeared first on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned a conviction against actor Jussie Smollett, who prosecutors accused of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019 in Chicago. Smollett, who is black and gay, was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. He had claimed two men targeted him in a hate-crime, yelling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}