CHICAGO _ It was just 12 words in a court hearing that lasted only a few minutes, but the fallout seems to have no end in sight.
"The state's motion in regards to the indictment is to nolle pros," a Cook County prosecutor said Tuesday, using the Latin legal term for "decline to prosecute" while dismissing all charges against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett.
The dismissal touched off a weeklong firestorm that heaped worldwide attention _ and a good deal of scorn _ on the Cook County criminal justice system.
Smollett had been accused in a 16-count felony indictment with staging a racist and homophobic attack on himself in downtown Chicago to further his career. Instead, with the charges abruptly dropped, the actor and his legal team did a victory lap, claiming that he was wrongfully accused all along and saying the city of Chicago owed him an apology.
Speculation soon began began that the case was torpedoed in stereotypical Chicago fashion, with rumors of a backroom deal fueled by the secret nature of Smollett's agreement with prosecutors and the immediate sealing of the court file after the charges were dropped.
Others pointed to State's Attorney Kim Foxx, who removed herself from the case because of communications she'd had with one of the actor's relatives, contact that was arranged by a politically connected lawyer who was chief of staff to Michelle Obama at the White House.
Chicago police responded to open-records requests from the news media with unheard-of haste, releasing detectives' reports _ many of which were signed off on the day that charges were dropped _ that detailed parts of the department's investigation into Smollett's claims but omitted several crucial aspects of the inquiry.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, got personal, mocking Smollett's profession of innocence and asking sharply, "Is there no decency in this man?" The mayor called the dismissal of charges "a whitewash of justice" and threatened to sue Smollett unless he apologizes and coughs up $130,000 to cover the cost of the investigation.
But nowhere have the shock waves reverberated more acutely than at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, where Foxx has tried to explain why a seemingly solid case was dismissed so soon after it was brought, with no attempt to secure an admission of guilt from Smollett. Instead, the only concessions wrung from the actor were to perform a minimal amount of community service and forfeit the $10,000 he'd posted as bond.
In media interviews Wednesday, Foxx defended the decision signed off on by her first assistant, Joseph Magats. She said that many of the thousands of similar, nonviolent felony cases her office handles each year are disposed of by alternative means and noted that Smollett's celebrity status should not earn him harsher treatment. Foxx and Magats said their evidence was solid and that they could have won at trial. But Foxx's explanations did little to quell the uproar, and her public relations team seemed to be unprepared for the public reaction.
In the days after the Smollett dismissal, Foxx's colleagues at two prosecutors' associations publicly criticized the office's handling of the case. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing rank-and-file officers, called for her to resign.
Then Friday night, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, Foxx said she welcomed "an outside, nonpolitical review" of her office's handling of the Smollett case.
For the first time, she also said the evidence against the actor was weaker than first suggested.
While there was "considerable evidence ... suggesting that portions of Smollett's claims may have been untrue," other aspects of the evidence and testimony "would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain," she wrote.
On Friday, some defense attorneys were furious their non-famous clients were never offered such generous deals. Rank-and-file prosecutors seemed baffled at their office's sudden decision, and many feared harsh reprisal if they talked publicly about the case.
"Putting the merits aside, the procedures are so irregular that they beg for answers," said longtime criminal-defense attorney Robert Loeb. "The nature of the disposition, claiming you can prove somebody guilty and dropping charges, sealing the file, and claiming that this is a form of pretrial diversion, when you put all of those together, that's unheard of."
The furor has shown few signs of dying down. In addition to the lawsuit threatened by Emanuel, the FOP has asked the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago to investigate what happened in the Smollett case.
Even President Donald Trump weighed in, saying in on Twitter Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice would look into the case.
But there have been some indications of reconciliation. In recent days, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who had been sharply critical of the decision to dismiss the charges, struck a conciliatory note, saying in media interviews that he and Foxx had a good working relationship and needed to move on from the Smollett case for the good of the city.
Smollett, who is African-American and gay, has said he was walking from a Subway sandwich shop to his apartment on East North Water Street about 2 a.m. Jan. 29 when two men walked up, yelled racial and homophobic slurs, hit him and wrapped a noose around his neck.
Smollett said they also yelled, "This is MAGA country," in a reference to Trump's campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again."
Police initially treated the incident as a hate crime, but their focus turned to Smollett after two brothers who were alleged to have been his assailants told police that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack, with a promise of an additional $500 later.
Police pieced together much of their evidence by reviewing video from about 55 police and private surveillance cameras showing the brothers' movements before and after the attack.
A week before the alleged attack, Smollett told police that he received a threatening letter at work. Prosecutors said Smollett staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio's response to the threatening letter. Chicago police took it a step further, accusing Smollett of faking the letter and saying he did it all to draw attention to himself and advance his career.
Federal authorities are conducting a separate investigation into that letter.
The Chicago police file released the day after the charges were dropped shed light on moves that police and prosecutors made behind the scenes to interview the two brothers involved in the alleged hoax in front of a grand jury.
But some of the reports that were sent were missing pages, including one documenting a crucial day in the investigation when the brothers began cooperating with police.
The police did not release any reports summarizing what the brothers said in their initial interviews, and a separate open-records request by the Chicago Tribune for the video-recorded interview of the brothers was denied.
All but one of the 13 reports that were released were approved by a supervisor on the evening of March 26 _ hours after Smollett's case had been dropped in court. Many weren't even submitted for approval until earlier that day, the paperwork showed.
