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Illinois gonna Illinois. I'm pretty sure that normally, jeopardy does not attach in a plea bargain until the plea is accepted; the prosecution cutting a (corrupt) deal to drop the charges without the court's involvement doesn't cut it. And won't cut it in future cases when the political element isn't included.
It's not a plea bargain, but a non-prosecution agreement. Whether or not jeopardy attaches is irrelevant because the court didn't overturn the conviction on double jeopardy grounds. The court ruled that, as a matter of public policy, prosecutors have to honor non-prosecution agreements once the defendants have performed their end of the bargain. They note Santobello, where a defendant had struck a plea deal where he agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a favorable sentencing recommendation. He plead guilty, but the prosecutor asked for the max and got it. The basic premise is that if the defendant gives something of value in reliance of getting something from the prosecutor, the prosecutor can't reneg.
Here, Smollett agreet to forfeit his bond in exchange for the charges being dropped. He forfeited the bond, and a nolle pross was entered. Cosby gave up his right to Fifth Amendment protections, Smollett gave up cash. You may think that one is more valuable than the other, and that dropping the charges for $10,000 wasn't justified, but that's irrelevant—deals like this don't work if you allow the court to second guess whether they were worth it or not.
The court's involvement has nothing to do with it. The deal is between the defendant and the prosecutor, not the defendant and the judge. In Santobello, the problem was that the prosecutor didn't make the promised recommendation, not that the judge didn't impose the desired sentence. Santobello plead guilty on reliance of the prosecutor's promise, but the judge can typically impose whatever sentence he wants to. There are compelling reasons I won't get into here why this rarely ever happens (and why if a judge has a problem with a plea deal he'll usually give the defendant the opportunity to withdraw the plea), but it is technically permissible.
More specifically, in the case of dropped charges where no guilty plea is involved, the prosecutor doesn't offer a dismissal with prejudice because this isn't within the prosecutor's power. Prosecutors can't dismiss cases; judges can. Technically they could file an unopposed motion and a judge could sign off on it but they don't do this because they've never had to before, and because it gums up the system when you have to wait 2 months for a judge's signature. And I don't even know if this would work because the practice isn't customary and until some custom develops around it the judge's default is always going to be to dismiss without prejudice. I've been an attorney for over 10 years and I've never seen a judge dismiss anything with prejudice. I've heard of a few cases, but these are either criminal cases that involved constitutional violations so dire that the judge wasn't confident the prosecutor could ever make a case, and one civil case where the pro se plaintiff was obviously nuts and the judge didn't want to deal with it anymore.
Future cases are one of the reasons the case went the way it did. The opinion is pretty clear on this. There are various diversionary programs where defendants are given the opportunity to have their cases dropped if they complete them. They get nolle prossed and if they flunk the charges are pursued and if they pass they stay nolle prossed. It would be perverse to suggest that someone would participate in such a program and be prosecuted anyway after successful completion. Some of these programs have high success rates saying that prosecutors aren't bound by these deals would put them in jeopardy.
What's corrupt about the deal? Do you have evidence that Smollett paid a kickback to the prosecutor in exchange for lenience? Or is just that you don't like the politics that you assume was behind the decision?
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Ain't that the truth. I didn't realize how bad it was until I moved to another state.
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I'm not sure what standard practice here is supposed to be (or perhaps ought to be), but Bill Cosby's conviction got overturned for similar reasons. And his was definitely less politically charged than Smollett's despite being related to the whole #metoo movement.
Cosby's conviction was overturned on self-incrimination grounds; he was induced to testify in a civil case by an agreement not to prosecute, and then that testimony was used against him. There was no such consideration in this case.
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