Jussie Smollett’s legal troubles in Chicago aren’t over yet.
After prosecutors in Chicago dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett after he was accused of reporting a bogus hate crime, they gave him a week to pay the investigative costs.
The Empire actor missed the deadline to pay back the more than $130,000 prosecutors say he owes the city and now he’s about to be sued.
Seeking $130,106.15 to pay for the overtime worked by officers looking into his claims, the City Law Department said it will file a lawsuit “in the near future.”
The Law Department also said it will “pursue the full measure of damages allowed under the ordinance.” What exactly those damages could be was not specified.
While new criminal charges won’t be brought against Smollett, the city’s lawsuit could lead to a civil trial in which jurors would determine whether Smollett orchestrated the attack.
Police maintain Smollett was guilty of faking the attach and filing a false police report and many are upset the State’s Attorney’s Office dropped the charges because of the stated belief that Smollett’s case wasn’t serious enough to warrant jail time.
“I was elected on a promise to rethink the justice system, to keep people out of prison who do not pose a danger to the community,” State’s Attorney Kim Foxx wrote in an opinion piece for The Chicago Tribune. “I promised to spend my office’s finite resources on the most serious crimes in order to create communities that are both safer and fairer.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
