In a stunning move today that angered Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his police superintendent, prosecutors in Chicago dropped all charges against the “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who had been accused of staging a hate crime attack in the city’s downtown in January.
“After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the city of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
In an interview later, Joe Magats, the prosecutor who made the decision, said that there had been no problems with the evidence or the police investigation into Smollett.
Magats said he dropped the charges after Smollett agreed to the community service and to give up the $10,000 he paid for his release, money that would have been returned to him if he had made all his court appearances.
He also noted that Smollett had no previous criminal record and said that the dropping of the charges “didn’t exonerate him.”
“We work to prioritize violent crime and the drivers of violent crime,” Magats said. “I don’t see Jussie Smollett as a threat to public safety.”
The about-face was striking nonetheless.
Smollett, 36, was arrested in late February, and on March 8, the State’s Attorney’s Office appeared to increase the pressure on him by announcing that he been indicted on 16 separate charges related to the attack report.
Less than three weeks later, prosecutors appeared to change their minds about pursuing the case any further.
Soon afterward, the mayor and the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, whose detectives had spent many hours trying to find who had attacked Smollett, and many more trying to get to the bottom of his account, held a news conference attacking prosecutors and the actor himself.
Emanuel said that Smollett’s celebrity had played a role, calling it “a whitewash of justice.”
“Where is the accountability in the system?” Emanuel said. “You cannot have, because of a person’s position, one set of rules apply to them and one set of rules apply to everybody else.”
“Our officers did hard work, day in and day out, countless hours, working to unwind what actually happened that night,” he added. “The city saw its reputation dragged through the mud.”
Johnson said, “I think this city is still owed an apology. At the end of the day, it’s Mr. Smollett who committed this hoax.”
Exoneration or no, for Smollett, who maintained his innocence, the outcome could hardly have been better.
After the hearing where prosecutors announced their decision, he appeared outside the courthouse and read out loud a written statement without taking questions.
He thanked his family, friends, and “the incredible people of Chicago and all over the country and the world who have prayed for me, who have supported me.”
“I want you to know that not for a moment was it in vain,” Smollett, wearing all black, said somberly. “I’ve been truthful and consistent on every single level since Day 1.”
“This has been an incredibly difficult time, honestly one of the worst of my entire life, but I am a man of faith and I’m a man that has knowledge of my history, and I would not bring my family, our lives or the movement through a fire like this,” he said.
Smollett, who is black, gay and an outspoken activist on social justice issues, had told the police that the attack happened in the early morning of Jan. 29.
He said that two men taunted him with homophobic and racial slurs and yelled “This is MAGA country,” a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
The assailants, according to Smollett, tied a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him.
But skepticism surrounding the attack occurred right from the start, even as several A-list celebrities and advocacy groups expressed their support for Smollett, painting the attack as another example of the increasing number of hate crimes in the era of Trump’s presidency.
Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, who knew Smollett, were detained on Feb. 13 after returning to the United States on a flight from Nigeria, and after hours of questioning, told detectives that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack as a way to gain publicity because he was unhappy with his “Empire” salary.
Police also said Smollett sent himself the threatening letter, an aspect of the investigation the F.B.I. had taken over.
Smollett denied the brothers’ accounts.
Smollett, who was later indicted on 16 counts of disorderly conduct, was removed from the final two episodes of the fifth season of “Empire.”
It is unclear what Fox, the network which airs “Empire, will do now; the network declined to comment.
The resolution of the case struck some legal experts as atypical, and the two sides in the case could not even agree on what to call it.
Prosecutors characterized it as an agreement, but Smollett’s legal team denied that any deal had taken place; in any event, Sett was still required to do community service and forfeit the $10,000. (Had he been convicted, he could have been required to pay far more than that to reimburse the police for their time spent on the case.)
After making his statement outside court, Smollett quickly turned and left the courthouse.
He was immediately surrounded by fans — one shouting “Free Jussie!” — and posed for selfies with them before being ushered into a black SUV.