After serving six days of a five-month sentence, Jussie Smollett walked out of Cook County Jail on Wednesday night, flanked by supporters who shepherded him into the back seat of an SUV.
Whether or not Mr. Smollett is forced to return to the jail in Chicago to complete his sentence is a question that is not likely to be answered for months — and possibly years.
The appellate court in Illinois, which ordered Mr. Smollett’s release, is not built for speed, and it was the anticipated delay in hearing his appeal that led the court order that Mr. Smollett should be free while it deliberates whether he was wrongly convicted of staging a fake hate crime. Several experts said proceedings of all sorts at the court typically take about a year or two years.
“This court will be unable to dispose of the instant appeal before the defendant would have served his entire sentence of incarceration,” according to the court’s order, which was signed by two of three justices on the panel.
Legal experts in Illinois differed on how common it is for defendants to be released on appeal when they had been ordered to serve relatively short jail sentences and their offenses were nonviolent, such as Mr. Smollett’s.
“Let’s say they reverse his conviction — he just did the 150 days for nothing,” said Gal Pissetzky, a criminal defense lawyer with experience on appellate cases.
