The Illinois Supreme Court overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction after ruling that the Cook County State’s attorney did not honor an earlier agreement by trying him a second time.

The court ruled that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after Smollett reached a deal with the Cook County state’s attorney in which charges against him were dropped in exchange for him forfeiting his $10,000 bond and performing community service. 

Smollet charged that two brothers physically attacked him in the Chicago Loop and called him homophonic slurs.

Police investigated the attack and determined that Smollet assisted in facilitating the attack incident to draw attention to himself and receive sympathy from his production company. 

Police concluded that he faked the crime against himself with brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, who later testified he paid them to stage the attack. 

Defense attorneys had argued his trial violated his Fifth Amendment protections against double jeopardy after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office agreed to drop the original charges against him. 

A special prosecutor, Dan Webb, was later assigned to reinvestigate the case and brought a new indictment against him, but Smollett’s attorneys have argued that Webb never should have been allowed to bring new charges after Smollett had signed an earlier agreement with the state’s attorney’s office.

On Thursday, the state’s highest court sided with Smollett’s attorney, reversing his conviction, and ordering the case against him dismissed. 

“Today we resolve a question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants. Specifically, we address whether the dismissal of a case by nolle prosequi allows the State to bring a second prosecution when the dismissal was entered as part of an agreement with the defendant and the defendant has performed his part of the bargain. We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse the defendant’s conviction,” Justice Elizabeth Rochford wrote in the ruling.

From 2015 to 2019, Smollett portrayed musician Jamal Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire.