Is this vindication for Jussie Smollett? He and his attorneys will certainly paint this decision that way, but don’t buy it for a moment.
In fact, Smollett and his attorneys never raised the question of guilt or innocence in his appeal over Smollett’s hate-crime hoax. Instead, they wisely stuck to technical issues in the second prosecution — and that’s all that the state supreme court in Illinois addressed:
The conviction against actor Jussie Smollett for falsely reporting a hate crime to Chicago police in 2019 has been overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court over prosecutorial issues.
Smollett’s case was reviewed by the state high court, which ruled Thursday that the former “Empire” actor should not have been charged after he entered a non-prosecution agreement with the Cook County State Attorney’s Office.
Actually, even Smollett’s team stops short of…