Actor Jussie Smollett faced sentencing in 2021 on charges related to false claims of a hate crime that were dismissed by the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday. File photo by Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE

The initial charges filed against 42-year-old Smollett by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx were dropped in 2019 in exchange for paying a $10,000 fine and performing community service.

But two years later, a special prosecutor re-indicted him in the case, and a jury found him guilty of five counts of disorderly conduct for orchestrating the hate crime by paying two men $3,500 to kill him on a Chicago street. ‘to attack’.

He knew the men on the set of the Empire television show of which Smollett was a cast member.

Smollett is black and gay and a police report filed on January 29, 2019, states that two “white supremacists” shouted racial epithets and homophobic slurs while wearing red “MAGA” hats, attacked him and put a noose around his neck in Streeterville in Chicago. neighborhood and shouted, “This is MAGA country.”

Smollett was briefly hospitalized to treat what he said were injuries he suffered during the hoax hate crime.

Police investigated the incident, which generated significant publicity that was initially in Smollett’s favor until the investigation revealed that he had orchestrated the entire event.

The two men who assisted Smollett testified against him at the trial.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge James Linn sentenced Smollett to 30 months in prison, ordered him to pay $120,106 in restitution to Chicago and required him to spend the first 150 days of his sentence in Cook County Jail.

Smollett served six days of his sentence before his lawyers secured his release pending the appeal, leading to the reversal of his conviction Thursday by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Smollett has consistently denied orchestrating the hate crime hoax.