The Illinois Supreme Court overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s 2021 conviction regarding his hate crime hoax.
“Today we resolve a question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants,” wrote the court. “Specifically, we address whether a dismissal of a case by nolle prosequi [“we shall no longer prosecute] allows the State to bring a second prosecution when the dismissal was entered as part of an agreement with the defendant and the defendant has performed his part of the bargain. We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse defendant’s conviction.”
Nolle prosequi: “a legal notice or entry of record that the prosecutor or plaintiff has decided to abandon the prosecution or lawsuit.”
Smollett claimed he was a victim of a hate crime in Chicago in January 2019.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped 16 charges against Smollett in March 2019, which the Supreme Court pointed to in its decision.
This is important: In exchange for the dismissal, Smollett agreed to do 16 hours of community service and forfeit a $10,000 bond.
Foxx withdrew from the case due to personal contact with a Smollett relative.
In August 2019, Cook County Judge Michael Toomin appointed former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb as special prosecutor.
The second prosecution against Smollett led to a conviction on five of six disorderly conduct charges in December 2021.
The Court wrote (I eliminated the footnotes):
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 State contends that the most relevant authority is Boyt. We disagree. Boyt involved a plea agreement that the State backed out of before defendant entered a plea in reliance on the agreement. As Stapinski explained, the due process considerations are different in the plea agreement setting. Moreover, the Boyt court distinguished Starks on the basis that the defendant in Boyt had “surrendered nothing” in reliance on the agreement. Here, defendant surrendered $10,000 to the City of Chicago.Because this case involves an agreement to dismiss charges in exchange for defendant doing something and defendant did what the agreement required, Starks and Stapinksi provide the relevant precedent. Again, Starks involved an alleged agreement between the prosecution and the defendant whereby the State would dismiss the charges if the defendant took and passed a polygraph examination. This court stated that, “[i]f there was an agreement as alleged, and if Starks fulfilled his part of it, then the State must fulfill its part.” Stapinski involved a situation where the State agreed not to bring charges against the defendant if he assisted them in a drug investigation. This court held that the principle for enforcing agreements such as this is the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment and that, when a defendant acted to his detriment in reliance on an agreement with the State, the State is required to honor the agreement as a matter of fair conduct. Here, we have a fully executed agreement between defendant and the State. Both parties performed their part of the agreement, and the trial court enforced it. To allow the State to renege on the deal and bring new charges would be fundamentally unfair and offend basic notions of due process.
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