American actor, Jussie Smollett is trying to get his conviction for faking an attack overturned again by claiming he should never have been prosecuted in the first place.
The Empire star is arguing he shouldn’t have been charged with felony disorderly conduct in December 2021 because prosecutors made a deal to dismiss the first indictment.
According to Mail Online, Smollett’s attorneys filed legal documents with the Illinois Supreme Court detailing the deal, which involved him doing community service and forfeiting his bond in return for charges being dropped.
The actor is taking his appeal to the state’s highest court after it was previously denied by the Appellate Court of Cook County.
Smollett was jailed in 2021 for staging an anti-gay, racist hate crime on himself and filing a false police report in January 2019.
‘What should have been a straightforward case has been complicated by the intersection of politics and public outrage,’ Smollett’s attorneys wrote in their Monday filing with the state’s highest court.
During the police probe into the incident, Chicago cops concluded that Smollett had hired brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo to carry out the crime.
Smollett was convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct, sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months felony probation, and $120,106 in restitution to the City of Chicago and a $25,000 fine.
However, he only served six days in jail before he was released on March 16, 2022, when his lawyers filed an appeal.
Now that the Appellate Court of Cook County has denied the appeal, Smollett may be required to complete the rest of his sentence.
During the original sentencing hearing, Smollett shouted that he was innocent, warning that he was not suicidal and that if he died in custody it was somebody else, and not him, who would have taken his life.
Smollett initially told Chicago police he had been accosted on a darkened street by two masked strangers.
According to his account of the attack, the assailants threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressing support for then-President Donald Trump.
The two assaulters were Nigerian brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, who are black.
The brothers, who testified in court, told the jury Smollett hired them to fake the attack because he wanted to boost his celebrity profile.
