After new indictment, judge tosses out Jussie Smollett’s double jeopardy claim
A Cook County judge on Friday shot down actor Jussie Smollett’s attempt to have the criminal charges against him dropped, telling the actor that the new charges against him do not violate his right against double jeopardy.
Smollett’s attorneys made the double jeopardy argument after a special prosecutor secured a six-count indictment on charges alleging that he lied to police about a racist and anti-gay attack that police say he staged himself. The new case came months after the county’s state’s attorney’s office abruptly announced it was dropping charges against the actor, angering police and City Hall.
The way Judge James Linn saw it, the only way double jeopardy would apply is if Smollett was legally punished for what had happened to him since he was charged in connection with the January 2019 incident in downtown Chicago. But Linn determined that the deal in which the state’s attorney’s office agreed to drop charges without requiring Smollett to admit any wrongdoing and Smollett agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond did not add up to legal punishment.
“There was no trial in this case, there was no jury empaneled, no witnesses were sworn, no evidence was heard, no guilty pleas were ever entered ... nothing like that every happened,” Linn said of the 2019 case. “There was no adjudication of this case.”
Smollett contends that early on Jan. 29, 2019, he was attacked by two masked men who made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing.
Weeks later, police alleged that Smollett, who is Black and openly gay, had paid two Black friends $3,500 to help him stage the attack because he hoped to drum up publicity.