Jussie Smollett is officially a free man.
On Wednesday night, the Empire star walked out of Cook County jail in Chicago after the Illinois Appellate Court granted the motion for a stay of sentence filed by Smollett’s legal team. According to Deadline, the Appellate Court judge rationalized the decision based off the fact that “Smollett likely already would have served his jail time sentence before his appeal had gotten very far.”
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This news come less than a week after the actor and director was sentenced to serve 150 days and 30 months felony probation for staging a fake hate crime and disorderly conduct for lying to the police.
“The first district appellate court in Illinois, in Chicago, just released an order ordering that Jussie Smollett should be released from jail immediately,” Smollett’s attorney Nenye Uche explained in an Instagram post hours before his client’s release. “Now this appeal that we filed, the basis of our appeal was very simple. We told the appellate court that pending the appeal, Jussie ought to be released because—quite frankly I’m going to put it in layman’s terms and not legal talk—the case sucks. The case is bogus against him and they released him. And that says a lot about what the appellate court thinks of this case.”
He continued:
Now we still have a long battle ahead of us. Everyone should please, please, please pray. We need to fight, we need the support we got. Everyone helped in this fight, all the calls of support, the video, the sharing on social media, everyone contributed to this big win today. So right now, we won round two. We want to win the remaining round and we need, we need your help and support. But big, big, big, big thank you to everyone and thank God. Jussie is coming home tonight.
Smollett was also ordered to pay $150,000 for personal recognizance bond.
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