Jussie Smollett is expected to make his first court appearance on Monday after facing a new set of charges.
The ‘Empire’ star was originally accused of orchestrating a racist and homophobic attack on himself back in January 2019, and whilst original charges against him – which included 16 felony counts of lying to police – were eventually dropped, he is now facing fresh charges over a year after the alleged attack. He had been indicted by a special Cook County grand jury on six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly making four separate false reports about the attack.
Special Prosecutor Dan Webb, who has been appointed in this case to examine the state’s attorney’s office’s handling of the case, is expected to attend the hearing in front of Chief Judge LeRoy Martin Jr., who will reveal which judge has been selected to preside over the case.
It is believed he will then tell the actor and his lawyers that they must immediately report to the trial judge.
The 37-year-old actor has always denied he has done anything wrong, having said before: “I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I was accused of.”
Webb’s team decided to bring charges against Jussie after looking at the “extensive nature” of his alleged falsehoods, as well as the amount of time and money the Chicago Police Department put into the investigation. He forfeited his $10,000 in bond money in exchange for the first case’s dismissal, which Webb noted is less than 10 percent of the approximately $130,000 the police spent on overtime in the case.
Meanwhile, after charges against him were dropped, local officials in Chicago sued Jussie for around $500,000 to cover various costs, including to compensate for the overtime pay for police who investigated his case. And in response, he filed his own lawsuit seeking to sue the City of Chicago “for their conduct underlying the arrest and their conduct thereafter”.