SPRINGFIELD (MCT) — The Illinois House opened a special investigation Tuesday into a Chicago Democrat charged in federal court with taking a cash bribe, but Rep. Derrick Smith was not there to answer the allegations.

Smith faces the first House probe since then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now in prison, was investigated and eventually impeached after his December 2008 corruption arrest. The House also investigated a Supreme Court justice, James Heiple, in the 1990s. He was not impeached and remained on the bench.