CHICAGO — In a stunning move, the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the convictions of former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, finding that a special prosecutor’s decision to retry him for allegedly staging a hate crime against himself violated his rights after the Cook County state’s attorney’s office previously dropped all charges.

The high court’s decision, which found that the prosecutor’s office entered into an agreement with Smollett when it dismissed the case, closes a chapter in perhaps the most controversial and closely-watched low-level felony case in Illinois in recent years.

“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 opinion said. “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.”

The court sent the case back to the trial court and ordered that it enter a dismissal.

In January 2019, Smollett told police that two men attacked him in the city’s Streeterville neighborhood, hitting him, yelling homophobic slurs and placing a noose around his neck. His story quickly unraveled, though, according to police, and Cook County prosecutors charged Smollett with disorderly conduct for allegedly concocting the hoax with brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who testified that he paid them to perpetrate the attack.

But weeks after indicting him, prosecutors dropped all counts against him, noting that he forfeited his $10,000 bond and had done community service. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx previously handed the case to deputies, saying she had recused herself.

The initial hate crime report – as well as the subsequent hoax allegations against Smollett – generated fevered, international attention, as did the abruptness of the dropped charges. The office’s move to dismiss the case drew questions and criticism in part because of the opacity behind the surprising decision.

Former Cook County judge Michael Toomin appointed special prosecutor Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney, to investigate, and he eventually filed new charges. Smollett was convicted by a jury of five of six counts of disorderly conduct in December of 2021 and was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months of probation and $130,160 in restitution, which he will no longer need to serve.

Speaking to the Tribune shortly after the Supreme Court opinion was released, though, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said the justices’ decision supports her previous statements that her office entered into a normal, non-prosecution agreement with Smollett that allowed the charges to be dismissed.

“Nothing about today’s decision surprises me,” she said.

Though she generally declined to answer specific questions about the decision-making in the case, saying she would not “re-litigate” it, Foxx said she regrets not appealing Toomin’s appointment of a special prosecutor.

“I didn’t want it to look like I was hiding something,” she said of that decision.

Foxx called the ensuing investigation and re-prosecution by Webb a “circus,” and said the experience has been “eye-poppingly frustrating.”

“It took going all the way up the Supreme Court — five years and millions of dollars later to get to the same result,” she said.

In a statement, Webb said he is disappointed in the opinion and respectfully disagrees with its reasoning.

“Make no mistake—today’s ruling has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence. The Illinois Supreme Court did not find any error with the overwhelming evidence presented at trial that Mr. Smollett orchestrated a fake hate crime and reported it to the Chicago Police Department as a real hate crime, or the jury’s unanimous verdict that Mr. Smollett was guilty of five counts of felony disorderly conduct,” the statement said. “In fact, Mr. Smollett did not even challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him in his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.”

Smollett’s attorney, Nenye Uche, did not immediately responded to a request for comment from the Tribune.

The opinion was delivered by Justice Elizabeth Rochford and unanimously signed on by Justices P. Scott Neville, David Overstreet, Lisa Holder White and Mary Kay O’Brien. Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis and Justice Joy Cunningham did not take part.

During a lengthy appeal process, Uche argued that the dropped charges amounted to an agreement between prosecutors and Smollett – particularly pointing out that the state kept his $10,000 bond. He argued that double jeopardy had attached when Smollett forfeited the bail money.

Attorneys for the state, though, contended that prosecutors who drop charges are not precluded from refiling charges in the same case.

A lower court previously affirmed the convictions in a split 2-1 decision.

The Supreme Court opinion noted that the state had argued that Smollett’s forfeiture of the bond was voluntary, as was in community service, but the justices wrote that it “defies credulity to believe that defendant would agree to forfeit $10,000 with the understanding that CCSAO could simply reindict him the following day.”

The justices said it was clear in the record that the state’s attorney’s office considered the dismissal to be a final resolution to the case.

“The only other interpretation of the prosecutor’s words is that defendant charitably agreed to give up his $10,000 bail bond at the exact moment that the prosecutor coincidentally dismissed the case,” the opinion said. “This is obviously not what happened.”

The judges further said that adopting the state’s position that Smollett could be re-prosecuted would have “terrible policy consequences.”

“Because the charges were dismissed in exchange for defendant’s community service and forfeiture of his bail bond and because defendant fully performed his end of the agreement, the State is bound by the agreement,” the opinion said.

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