Empire star, Jussie Smollett’s conviction for orchestrating a hate crime hoax has been overturned.
On Thursday, November 21, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the decision due to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx initially dropping all charges against him before the special prosecutor decided to retry him
This choice violated his rights, the high court ruled.
The actor, who is Black and gay, claimed two Nigerian-American brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs, and tossed a noose around his neck in downtown Chicago, while he was filming the television drama in 2019.
However, a special prosecutor appointed to look into why the case was dropped later concluded there were “substantial abuses of discretion” in the state’s attorney office during the earlier round, and a grand jury subsequently restored charges against Smollett in 2020.
Testimony at his trial alleged Smollett paid $3,500 to two men he knew from Empire to carry out the attack. Prosecutors said he told them what slurs to shout and to yell that Smollett was in “MAGA country,” a reference to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
Prosecutors alleged the actor staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio’s response to hate mail he received while filming Empire.
