Three years ago actor Jussie Smollett was convicted on felony disorderly conduct charges and sentenced to 150 days in the Cook County jail after staging a hate crime hoax in Chicago at the height of his career [click here if you missed that].
Now Jussie is taking his appeal all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court...
From CBS News
Jussie Smollett is asking the Illinois Supreme Court to throw out his 2021 conviction for lying about being the victim of a hate crime in 2019, arguing he is protected by double jeopardy.
"What should have been a straightforward case has been complicated by the intersection of politics and public outrage," Smollett's attorneys wrote in their Monday filing with the state's highest court.
Smollett, who is Black and gay, and best known for his role on the TV show "Empire," has claimed he was the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime in Streeterville in 2019. But after investigating his claims, police began focusing on Smollett himself, and he was charged with 16 felonies, accusing him of staging a fake hate crime against himself and lying about it to police.
Those charges were dropped weeks later, but a judge later appointed a special prosecutor to determine if new charges should be filed, after ruling the deal to drop the initial charges was invalid.
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