The years-long saga of Jussie Smollett’s fake hate crime appears to finally be over. On Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned his 2021 conviction for disorderly conduct and declared that the actor will no longer have to report to prison after all.

“Today we resolve a question about the state’s responsibility to fulfill the agreements it makes with suspects,” the court wrote in its ruling. “Specifically, we examine whether a dismissal of a case by nolle prosequi allows the state to bring a second prosecution when the dismissal was entered into as part of an agreement with the defendant and the defendant has fulfilled his part of the bargain. We believe that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a violation of due process, and we therefore revoke the defendant’s conviction.”

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In 2019, Smollett was best known for his role as Jamal Lyon in the TV series Empire. But he made headlines for a different reason on January 29 of that year, when he was reportedly attacked by two unknown assailants on his way to Fox’s Chicago studio. The men allegedly made racist and homophobic comments, threw a rope around his neck and shouted ‘MAGA’ (for Make America Great Again, the well-known political slogan of then-President Donald Trump). Smollett spent a short time in the hospital, and the situation was initially investigated by Chicago police as a hate crime, until investigators found evidence that Smollett had actually collaborated with his “assassins” to stage the incident. A grand jury subsequently indicted him on 16 felony counts of falsifying police reports and lying to investigators.

But Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx withdrew from the investigation, and the assistant state’s attorney, who was supposed to oversee the case in her absence, struck a deal with Smollett’s defense team. All of these charges were dropped in exchange for Smollett providing community service and posting a $10,000 bond to the city of Chicago. He was also written off Empire by creator Lee Daniels and did not participate in the show’s final season.

This decision was not particularly popular. Both Trump and Rahm Emanuel, then mayor of Chicago, publicly disagreed with dropping charges against Smollett. Foxx in particular was heavily criticized for her refusal and her office’s deal, which was used against her by political opponents when she ran for re-election in 2020 (although she was ultimately successful in that race).

In 2020, a special prosecutor was appointed to retry the case. That time it went to a jury trial and Smollett was convicted of disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to 30 months’ probation, with the first 150 days to be served in jail. But Smollett never served that sentence. He appealed the conviction, and although the Illinois Court of Appeals upheld the initial ruling, he appealed again, and now the Illinois Supreme Court has reversed the decision, saying that since the government had made a deal with Smollett and he had fulfilled his purpose, after all, there was no legal basis for trying him again.

“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 felt it was unjust,” the Illinois Supreme Court wrote in its ruling this week. “Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any criminal case would be a finding by this court that the state was not required to honor agreements upon which people have harmfully relied.”

The court’s logic is very similar to that of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court when it overturned Bill Cosby’s sex abuse conviction and released him from prison in 2021, saying the conviction was based on statements Cosby only made in a civil case after being given assurances that he would not face criminal charges (which meant he could not invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination). The Illinois court quotes the Pennsylvania court’s ruling in the final pages of its ruling.

You can read the full Illinois Supreme Court ruling here.