After being found guilty late Thursday of faking a hate crime against himself to raise his celebrity profile, US actor Jussie Smollett, best known for his role on the TV show Empire, will return to court in Chicago in late January for a post-trial hearing and will learn whether he will go to prison at a later date.
Prosecutors claim Smollett, who is Black and homosexual, lied to police when he said he was assaulted by two masked people on a dark Chicago street in January 2019.
The verdict was reached after nearly 10 hours of debate by a panel of six men and six women over two days.
Smollett, 39, was found guilty of five of the six felony disorderly conduct counts he faced by a 12-person jury.
In mid-February 2019, weeks after Smollett claimed he was attacked, he was acquitted on a sixth count of lying to a detective.
Smollett’s charges have become a hotspot in America’s culture wars, where race, politics, and fame intersect.
Smollett only made matters worse by continuing to stick by his story during trial, according to Daniel K Webb, the special prosecutor in charge of the case.
“This jury worked so hard,” Mr. Webb said, “and for Mr. Smollett to come up before them and lie for hours and hours and hours — that really compounded his misconduct.”
Nenye Uche, Smollett’s primary defense attorney, claimed his client was “an innocent man” who believed the guilty convictions would be reversed on appeal.
“I don’t for one second believe that justice was done today,” Uche said outside the courtroom, adding that the defense was up against it since “Jussie was already tried and convicted in the media.”
When Smollett originally claimed in January 2019 that he was attacked by individuals yelling “This is Maga country,” a play on Donald Trump’s key campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” numerous celebrities sprang to his defense.
Smollett claims that his assailants tied him up and threw chemicals on him while chanting racial and homophobic obscenities and showing their support for Trump.
A month later, police arrested Smollett, accusing him of paying two brothers $3,500 to stage the attack in order to win public sympathy and further his entertainment career. He pled not guilty to six charges of felony disorderly conduct in the end.
Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, two brothers, stated that Smollett hired them to take part in a hoax and told them how to assault him. His lawyers said that the brothers made up the story about the attack being manufactured and that if they were paid $1 million each, they would not testify against Smollett.
Smollett said he paid Abimbola Osundairo $3,500 for nutrition and training guidance. When asked by his defense counsel if he ever paid Osundairo for a hoax, Smollett answered, “Never.”
Officials in Chicago have sued Mr. Smollett to recuperate part of the city’s expenditures, unhappy by the amount of police time spent on the case. They were also crucial in 2019, when the charges against Mr. Smollett were quietly dropped in exchange for Mr. Smollett’s agreement to forfeit his $10,000 bond and perform community service, despite the fact that the city’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, had recused herself from the case due to a potential conflict of interest.
